


Flesh of My Flesh

by matrixrefugee



Category: Gattaca
Genre: Alternate Ending, Alternate Universe, Angst, F/M, Sequel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-09-28
Updated: 2010-09-28
Packaged: 2017-10-12 06:45:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 29,578
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/122035
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/matrixrefugee/pseuds/matrixrefugee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>+J.M.J.+</p>
    </blockquote>





	1. ImPatient

**Author's Note:**

> +J.M.J.+

+J.M.J.+

Flesh of My Flesh

By "Matrix Refugee"

Author's Note:

I'm better known for my "A.I." fanfics (Jude Law fans: which see, please!), but I thought I'd take a brief break from them for a slight change of pace…but I couldn't completely get away from writing fics featuring a character portrayed by a certain divinely beautiful, outstandingly talented, green-eyed Englishman, could I? I have to admit that _Gattaca_ isn't really among my favorite films; I admire it more than I actually like it. The cinematography is remarkably executed and the script is very tightly written, but the ending brassed me off. Jerome (Eugene) didn't deserve to die, even if he chose it, and even if he was a bit of a jerk. So…hence this alternate ending fiction. I have to admit, there's a bit of me in Jerome (Eugene) here, since I've had problems with suicidal ideations. I also have to admit there's a lot of me in the female character in this (We both have the same condition, and our speech patterns are similar), but it it's hardly enough to warrant the "Mary Sue" label.

Disclaimer:

I do not own the movie _Gattaca_ , its characters, concepts (including jargon), or other indicia which are the property of Sony Pictures, Andrew Niccol, et al.

Chapter I

ImPatient

Irony of ironies, all is irony…

They caught me in the act: first the Hoovers, then my family…

I had let myself get snarled up in the whole borrowed ladder operation involving the InValid Vincent Freeman just for something to do, to relieve the deadening tedium of my pointless existence. And what happened? The wretched broken ladder had to get himself snarled up in a murder investigation involving the death of one of the directors at the Gattaca Aeronautics Center, where, as I found, he'd once worked as a janitor. The morning Vincent/Jerome left earth with the exploration team going to Titan, I had it all set: I was, as I told him, doing a little traveling myself—into the next life, if there is one.

I had the perfect escape route: the large incineration chamber where Vincent had scrubbed himself clean of all loose hairs and skin cells each morning, erasing the evidence of his true genetic identity. For all genetic intents and purposes, **he** was Jerome Morrow. I was nobody. I was just the supplier of his passport: blood samples, hair samples, skin cells, even urine samples. He was welcome to it. People remember the gold medallists, not the silver medallists. The world would hardly blink when it heard I had disappeared without a single trace. Nobody hardly noticed when I tried to end the sick joke of my life the first time.

But as I dragged myself into the chamber, ready for blastoff, someone knocked very loudly at the outer door of my apartment. I ignored it and hauled my useless legs over the sill of the chamber.

The knock came louder, more insistent. "Mr. Jerome Morrow, open up!" an authoritarian voice called.

I settled myself inside the chamber, pulling my knees up. No turning back.

"We know you're in there," the voice said.

The hall door opened. They must have had the superintendent's key.

Just as I reached out to throw the switch and pull the door shut for takeoff, someone grabbed me by the wrists and hauled me out onto the floor.

I looked up at a bulky older man in a standard issue blue suit. Beyond him, two younger goons in similar suits had set to work searching the apartment.

"Who are you?" I demanded.

The tall man took out a badge with an ID from inside his jacket. "Lewin Pemberton, FBI, Identity Theft Division."

"You're mistaken," I said. "I haven't stolen anyone's identity."

"No, but you let an InValid borrow it," the Hoover said. "I see we came just in time to save the chief source of evidence from a fiery fate."

"Who told you I had anything to do with that?" I demanded, but I quickly bit my tongue.

That girl, Irene, Vincent's girlfriend, must have told them everything she knew. She'd found out what we were up to.

I suppose I should have made it a little interesting for the Hoovers by resisting arrest, fighting back, whatnot. I couldn't do much in my condition, and I didn't want to add to my list of charges either. They cuffed me and carried me out to a waiting van. I expected them to throw me in the clink, but instead, they brought me to the mental ward of a local hospital. I ended up lying in a bed with my arms above my head, wrists bound to the headboard.

That evening, my father showed up, the first time he ever came to see me since I came over here to the States, where the family had packed me off to get me out of sight.

"Seems like just yesterday," I drawled.

"Jerome, why did you do this?" he said, glaring down at me.

"What, trying to end this farce or loaning the ladder to the InValid?"

"Don't be ridiculous; I meant trying to kill yourself."

"Wouldn't it be cheaper then? You wouldn't have to pay me to stay off your back."

"You listen to me, boy. You almost gave your mother a second heart attack. We can't put up with this kind of nonsense. Am I clear?"

"You couldn't be any more clear than if you'd printed in huge block capitals."

"You are going to get yourself some professional help. You will find a reliable psychologist and you will work with that counselor, or else you cannot expect to see another penny from me."

"So what am I supposed to do? Just pick a name out of the telephone directory?"

"No. I'm going to ask your primary physician to refer you to someone."

"Let me be the one to do that," I insisted. "For God's sake, I'm twenty-nine years old; I'm not longer in knee pants."

"You act as if you were."

Later that evening, when the doctor came later to check and make sure I was still breathing, I brought up the subject—and to ask how long I had to stay there.

"We have to keep you under observation for a few days more till we can determine how fit you are to be released. But I know of at least one psychologist who would be ideal for you," he said. "I'll clear it with your primary care physician first."

"Man or woman?"

"I'll tell you when the referral clears."

After three days, the doctors decided I wasn't going to make another attempt on my life, so they removed the restraints and let me move about as much as I could in my condition. I stayed in my corner of the ward as much as I could. The place wasn't exactly Bedlam, but it was bad enough: drug addicts, manic-depressives, depression cases. There was one kid of twenty who was every bit as lucid as I was, but who kept urinating against the walls, regardless of what the orderlies told him.

InValids all of them, I realized. True, I had shared my apartment with the InValid Vincent Freeman, the one who got me into this mess, but that was a whole different matter. I could have turned him out if his presence had thoroughly bored me enough. But these…I couldn't escape from these except to avoid associating with them.

The wretched doctors kept me there for two weeks, to make certain I wasn't going to pull anything else. The Hoovers dropped the charges against me: I gave them the name and number of the ladder salesman who'd sold my ladder to Vincent, which reduced my penalty down to a $2,000 fine.

At the end of the same period, my physician, Lockheed, arranged for my first appointment with the shrink, one Dr. M. Koestelbaum. This allowed me permission to go home, but they had a visiting nurse come in twice a day to see that I hadn't choked myself with a lamp cord yet. I honestly think they sent this frumpy old bag in her sixties on purpose, probably has that broken rung that causes Alzheimer's.

Tuesday morning found me in the waiting room of Dr. Koestelbaum's office. I occupied myself with wondering what the M stood for. Probably Martin or Morris or Merton or Melvin. Or worse: Martha or Margaret. I saw her in my mind's eye: a dowdy dame in her late fifties, iron gray hair pulled back in a bun, cat's eye glasses and a thick layer of foundation covering up her mustache.

A middle-sized woman (middle-sized to someone who can look her in the eye instead of her midriff; everyone over the age of seven towers over me) in her late twenties walked in, clad in a long, loose-cut pearl gray tunic embroidered in purple around the hem, the cuffs of the sleeves and the high but collarless neckline and baggy pants of the same material, the kind of outfit you generally see Pakistani women wear. She was white to guess from her ivory colored skin and red-brown hair; not outstandingly beautiful but not ugly.

She smiled down at me as she walked by on her way into the office. I managed to return a brief smile, just to be polite. Probably the secretary…

A moment later, the girl in gray came out; she stooped down to my level.

"Hello, you must be Jerome. I'm Dr. Minerva Koestelbaum."

"Pleased to meet you," I managed. She held out her hand to me; I shook it just for the sake of formality. She had a gentle but firm handshake, almost like a man's.

"Shall we get started?" she asked.

I heaved myself out of the waiting room chair into my wheelchair. "The sooner we get started is the sooner I can get this the h- over with," I said.

I wheeled myself after her as she led the way to the office door. She opened it and stepped aside, holding it for me. I glanced up at her face, expecting that pitying stare most people give me when they hold doors for me. But I didn't find it. She had a serene, quiet face, oddly like the face of the Japanese moon goddess on the scroll my mother had on the wall of her sitting room.

The office was a well-lit room, clean but not tidy, not the way I prefer rooms to be. Bookshelves lined the walls and what wasn't covered by shelves was covered with framed pictures: framed photographs and children's loud-colored scrawls of drawings. A black leather couch faced a couple of armchairs and beyond them, close to one wall, stood a hotdesk with a flatscreen monitor perpendicular to the desktop.

I made for the couch, lifted myself out of my chair and onto the upholstery of the couch.

"I was about to offer you the couch, but I'm glad you've made yourself at home," she said.

"I figured I'd keep to the psychologist clichés, the shrink with the patient on the couch," I said. All she needed to do to complete the picture was to wear rimless glasses and speak in a German accent.

She took an old-fashioned yellow pad of paper and a manila folder from the desk top and drew one of the armchairs closer to the couch and sat down opposite me.

"I hope you don't mind if I take notes," she said. "It's the only way I can keep track of the conversation; I used to use a voice recorder, but some people find it annoying."

"Whatever," I muttered.

She opened the folder. "I've also got your complete medical history here…Your full name is Jerome Eugene Morrow, you were born in Castlereagh, England, December 29, 2054. You are a Valid; you've had no major illnesses…you have a lot of reports on physicals, on account of your being—my!—a championship swimmer, went all the way to Frankfurt Summer Olympics of 2078. You must have a lot of fond memories of that."

"In a manner of speaking," I replied, not looking up.

"I'd better warn you, Jerome: I have a lie-o-meter built into my head; you can't lie or withhold the truth from me completely, no matter how hard you try."

I noticed her hands lacked any rings, wedding or engagement or otherwise; probably didn't have a boyfriend to give her any, and with her built in lie-o-meter, she probably couldn't get one.

"And…oh dear, it says here you were involved in a car accident about six months after you won your silver medal. Your lower lumbar vertebrae were smashed and your spinal cord was three-quarters severed. That must have been a terrible setback."

"I survived it, didn't I?" I shrugged.

She looked over the top of the folder, but she went on. "Your physician, Carlton Lockheed, referred you to me because you tried to suicide in an incinerator…I have to admit I've seen a number of suicidal people before, and most of them went pretty much by the textbook: trying to shoot themselves or drown themselves or overdose on sleeping pills. But yours was original to say the least."

I shrugged. "I wanted to be thorough."

"What led you to attempt this? Is that what's brought you here today?"

"You might call it that. My father threatened to cut me off from my allowance unless I got therapy. On account of the obvious, I don't have any other income."

"It sounds to me, from this and from your general attitude, that you don't want to be here."

"It's either come here or end up on the street."

"Well…if you don't feel ready to talk about this, maybe we can just spend this session getting to know each other a little better.

"I think you know quite a bit about me already."

Without turning her face away from me, she turned and put the folder back on the desk. "That's just a lot of facts about Jerome the organism. That doesn't tell me much about Jerome the human being."

"Well, you've found out one thing about me: you know that I don't wan to be here."

"Can you tell me why, or would you rather not?"

"It was my father's idea," I said. I told her about what led to my second suicide attempt; I didn't let out one word about the first, the event that landed me in this wheelchair.

"So you've been paraplegic for three years now?" she asked.

"For God's sake, call me what I am: I'm _crippled_."

"Okay," she said slowly. "Do you use that word to be blunt, or do you use it to whip yourself?" she asked.

I honestly couldn't reply. I didn't know.

I have to admit that woman got me thinking…

Helping Vincent/Jerome was probably the most decent thing I'd ever done with my life, but it had cost me. He had what I didn't. He had his dreams of reaching for the stars. Mine had died on the highway outside London. Vincent Freeman…of the two of us, he was the real free man, though I had more privileges.

 _Crippled_.

I knew why I insisted on that word. I was crippled of soul as well as of limb.

But who was she to ask this question of me?

After Nurse Ratched, or whatever her name was, had gone for the night, Eckart, my only real friend, came up bringing along a case of vodka and a carton of Turkish cigarettes. He runs a racket on imports like this, as well as on less consumable and tangible commodities.

"I need some information," I told him. It took me a couple stiff drinks to get up the courage to admit that to him.

"What, you need another under the table background check?" he asked. "Besides, should you really be talking to me now that the Hoovers got you on the radar?"

"I just need a little information about a woman."

"Ohhh, that kind, eh? Don't want to get too interested before you find out the worst, is that it? Give me a name and a few identifying marks: Blonde? Brunette? Redhead?"

"No, it's much more professional than that." I handed him Dr. Koestelbaum's card. "This one. She's a shrink."

"This should be bloody easy. I bet you could do it yourself if your brain could get up off its a-."

"Watch it, Eckart."

"Sorry."

"I want her DNA record."

"Why, you suspecting her of being a borrowed ladder? Trying to curry favor with the Hoovers by turning in an illegal?"

"I just want to know who my father roped me into seeing for therapy, to see if she's competent."

Eckart took the card. "No problem." He made the card vanish before my very eyes, then pulled it out of my vest pocket.

"Don't lose that. My life is at stake," I warned.

He gave me a sidewise, jeering look, as if to say, 'you didn't seem so worried about your life when the Hoovers caught you'.

Next evening, Eckart had returned, holding up a CD-RW like a medal.

"Take a look at what I found, Jere," he said, putting the disk into the drive on my desktop. He punched a few keys.

A page opened up on the screen. Dr. Koestelbaum's picture appeared, along with a brief profile and a chart of her DNA.

InValid.

Genetic related defects: Overbite

Myopia

Allergies: pollen, dust, latex

Asperger's Syndrome

"Good God, I'm surrounded by InValids!" I groaned, pushing myself down in my chair.

"Yeah, it's an InValid who brings your cigarettes."

"InValids seem to be my lot in life. How on earth did she ever get qualified? Someone like her ought to be emptying the bedpans in the hospital, not treating mental patients."

"Including Valids like you, I suppose."

"I'm not a mental patient," I retorted.

"Then how come you're seeing her?"

"I told you, it's my father's idea."

"Well, you ain't gonna like what I got to say, but I'll say it anyway: I think you started this whole chain of events, whether you're troubled or not."

I looked up at him. He's so ugly I shouldn't let him near me: I might catch the uglies from him. At least he's so short I can almost look him in the eye; his olive tinted skin has a muddy cast to it and his face is so thin it reminds me of a skull. I suppose you could say I keep him around for the same reason the medieval scholars used to keep a skull on their desks. With him hanging around, I've got the skull though it happens to still be attached to the rest of the InValid.

He's right, dammit.

The next time I went in for another appointment with the InValid, I went in well armed with information.

I did a little research on my own about Asperger's Syndrome. It seems they're incredibly bright—for genetic defectives—but they tend to get stuck in their own little worlds, they fixate on narrow, bizarre interests—doorknobs, nineteenth-century bookbinding techniques, android movies—and they also tend to miss or fail to interpret social cues and non-verbal communication (eye contact, etc.). This could prove useful.

I suppose it was good I had a female therapist who's an Asperger's case: I could ogle her up and down but she wouldn't notice what I was up to.

I actually tried this. I was lying on her couch, eyeing her up and down from under lowered lids, wondering what that light, loose Pakistani tunic she wore concealed. I was just imagining how she'd look spread out on the floor, when she suddenly got up and stabbed a pencil into the back of my hand.

"What the h- did you do that for?" I demanded, pulling myself upright.

"You were ogling me," she said. "And I will not allow that kind of behavior in my office."

"How do you know?"

She knelt down to my level, her violet blue eyes on fire. "I'm twenty-seven years old, and I've seen men ogling me for fifteen years. I should know what an ogle looks like by now. Plus, you were looking at me through your lashes, which leads me to believe you had something to hide."

"How would you know? Can you process that non-verbal communication?"

She looked at me, her brows gathered.

"I didn't think so. You ought to be treated, not me." But even as I said this, her look changed.

"How did you find out?"

"That's not as important as how you got to where _you_ are," I said. "You're an InValid."

"That's true," she admitted. "My parents were devout Catholics. They got married right about the time Pope Benedict XX promulgated his encyclical _Humani Imago Dei_ , On Non-Therapeutic Genetic Manipulation. They obeyed its teachings and had me as a GodChild, the old-fashioned way. They raised me as if I were a Valid. They had connections: they knew people who could get me the necessary permits and have the exception clauses signed. There are legal ways: you just have to find the right lawyers. I made up my mind that if I couldn't fix the system myself, that I'd help people live to their best inside the system as it stands. And that's why I'm here to help you."

"In case you've forgotten, I'm a Valid," I reminded her.

"That's true. But you're every bit as imprisoned."

"Don't remind me," I snapped, looking down at my useless legs.

"I wasn't referring to that, I was referring to something else."

I knew what she meant, but I didn't want to hear it. "How could I be imprisoned? You were the one who had to buck the system."

"Let me tell you how it is with me, and maybe you can tell me how it is with you.

"Try to imagine what its like having the genetic identity chip on your National ID card scanned and having the same clerk or guard or whatnot ignore the Honorary Valid stamp on the card, just because the chip scanned InValid. Try having your ex-fiance reject you just because he found out your ladder has a few damaged rungs.

"Besides," she added, putting her head on one side with an innocently flirtatious smile. "With your looks, I bet a lot of girls don't notice your handicap."

"Oh, they notice, since they have to look _down_ to look into my eyes—unless they're three foot dwarves," I retorted. "The only way I can get a date is if I pay for it."

"You need to try harder."

I was tempted to say, 'I could start with you', but I didn't want a sexual harassment charge added to the ladder-selling charge on my record.

"What woman wants…a cripple," I snipped, but even I could hear my voice wobble.

"Can you tell me why you use that word?"

I moistened my lips, but my tongue felt like sandpaper. "I think it's because my soul is crippled."

Then it happened. The water-works turned on in my eyes and I started sniveling like a baby.

Minerva put her hand on mine. "Go on. Get it out. You'll feel better once you get that out of your system."

She offered me a tissue. I pushed it away, hiding my eyes from her. But she took my wrists in her hands and looked into my face. Though my tears half blinded me, I could tell she was fighting back the tears herself. So much for the inability to process non-verbal communication.

I have to admit, I felt rotten, but I felt better when I got home. My hand went for the bottle of vodka I'd hidden behind the couch, but I stopped it.

I took a long hot bath that night. I swore I could feel something seeping out of my body, like a venom I'd kept bottled up in my veins for too long.

I slept that night like I hadn't slept in years, the kind of sound, satisfying slumber I used to have after a successful competition. Come to think of it, I suppose you'd say I had just had a successful competition, against my worst opponent.

To be continued…

Literary Easter Eggs:

Doorknobs, et al—The first two are actual fixed interests some people with Asperger's Syndrome have had, while the last is one of my own.


	2. Validation

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> +J.M.J.+

+J.M.J.+

Flesh of My Flesh

By "Matrix Refugee"

Author's Note:

Didn't want to keep you in too much suspense…I got into this fic so much that, in addition to doing a lot of heavy-duty 'Net research on spinal cord injuries (apologies to the lady who was doing research on a different topic via the same medical info site, whose printouts kept getting mixed up with mine!), I also went out and ordered the soundtrack CD to help me get the "feel" of the film into this fic. It's some of the most incredible film music I've ever heard: lyrical, minimalist, sensuous, stark, hopeful, devastating…(Also note: if I got any of the finer details, plotwise or astronomical, wrong, please bear with me: it's been a while since I saw the film, and I'm also a little rusty on my planetology).

Disclaimer:

See chapter I. I also don't own the famous "Serenity Prayer" which appears here.

II Validation

To be utterly frank, this InValid got me using brain neurons I'd been ignoring…

Whether I liked it or not, Dr. Koestelbaum got under my skin in the worst way. I stopped gritting my teeth every time I had an appointment—and per order my physician and my father, I went in twice a week. She never failed to keep me amused, watching her methods in action was some of the best performing I had ever seen. But right when I thought I could skirt some issue and get away with it, she would insert something I hardly expected. And what she lacked in Validity she made up for in persistence.

"Tell me about your family. What was it like for you growing up? What was your relationship with your parents? What was their relationship like from what you could see? Did you have any brothers or sisters?"

"What, do you want to know what it was like to grow up as a genuine Valid?" I asked.

"No, I was asking you about your family in the subjective sense."

"All right, I see what you want from me.

"My father was in bioengineering, so of course he had the jump on all the new research and genetic engineering techniques that came out. Mum came from a wreck of a titled family, the Flytes of Marchmain, which had fallen on its luck, one of the younger daughters, so it hardly mattered who she married so long as he was respectable.

"They decided to improve the stock one step further. They removed the latent tendency toward heart disease and senility in Mum's family, removed the glaucoma and arthritis that plagued my father's side. They made sure I would have my mother's dark good looks and my father's eyes and intellect. Oh, and they lengthened something on my chromosomes, something wasn't right and it caused shortened life expectancy."

"The telomeres, the ends of the chromosomes."

"Yes, that sounds right."

Her hand kept moving, writing the whole time I spoke, but she paused for a second, as if jotting down an observation.

"So, they implanted what would eventually become me on the 29th of March. Nine months later to the day, I popped out; I guess you'd call me a Christmas present, though my parents knew exactly what they were going to get: a male child, utterly perfect in every respect. My father used to boast that I didn't let out a peep as the nurses took the blood sample to check and make sure none of my rungs had cracked or shattered. But I was 100% pure Valid; my parents got their money's worth, close to a million Euros worth of genetic manipulation."

"So, did you have any brothers or sisters?"

"No, it was enough trouble for them to make me, as I later found out. I think I used to pest Mum about wanting a little brother, but she always told me she couldn't have another child, that she'd had trouble having me: her heart gave out a moment after my birth. I was fine, but Mum had to be resuscitated.

"All the while I was growing up, my father never let me forget for a minute who I was and what I was. 'You're a Morrow: we give our 200%, and I put 200% into making you what you are today'."

"The first part at least is fairly good philosophy…but it all depends on what spirit you do it in."

"In that case, I suppose my father was completely in the wrong spirit about it."

"He sounds as if he does. The fact that he's used threats to get you into therapy…"

"I'm here, aren't I? This is Jerome Eugene Morrow you're speaking with."

"But you keep coming back here, and you keep talking about what's bothering you."

"It's either that or out on the street."

"My lie-o-meter is picking up a signal. I think you really want to be helped." She leaned forward slightly, looking at me. "I think the inner Jerome, the real Jerome, the one whom the outer Jerome keeps trying to silence with sarcasm, wants to come out into the world."

"You can blame my father for that."

"Yes, he was a large contributor to your problems, but it's never that simple. There are always many other factors.

"Tell me about your mother. What was she like?"

"If you'd been around her any length of time, your lie-o-meter would be ticking like a sped-up clock.

"She gave everyone the impression that she and I were very close, when we weren't."

"It's interesting you should put it that way."

"Why?"

"Because you keep referring to your father as 'father', but you often refer to your mother as 'Mum'."

"It's an old habit. My father didn't want to be called anything less than 'father'. As I was saying… She made most of the decisions about my schooling and activities, hired the best tutors for me, saw to it that all my needs were adequately met and then some. You'd say she spoiled me; it didn't take long for me to figure out that I could get around her very easily. I don't think she quite knew what to do with me, so she kept my schedule packed to make certain she was never stuck with me. She left most of my basic care in the hands of a succession of nannies and governesses. I honestly believe she was terrified of me, as if I were some freak of nature."

"Why do you say that?"

"Whenever she actually hugged me, it was very stiff, wooden, it never felt right, only forced. It was like being hugged by a robot."

"That might be another part of why you've built these walls around yourself. You're afraid of being hurt by people, so you distance yourself from them. But that only hurts you more."

I wasn't about to argue that. She'd found the crack in my armor, the soft spot under the dragon's wing. Suddenly I had nothing to say in reply to this. My usual acerbic wit failed me when I needed it the most. Or was it somehow supposed to do that?"

A shadow drifted over me. I realized I'd closed my eyes. I opened them and looked up.

Minerva knelt beside the couch, looking down at me. "Sit up," she said.

I pulled myself upright, facing her.

"Do you want a hug?" she asked. "Do you think you need one?"

"I…I don't know…" No one had ever asked me that, so I hardly knew how to reply. "I…suppose, yes."

"It's not _that_ kind of a hug," she said. She put one am around me, behind my head, the other across my chest and pressed me to her shoulder. My hand went to the crook of her elbow, intending to push her away, but I drew her to me. I stopped myself: I couldn't have the stereotypical male-patient-falling-for-his-female-therapist kind of scenario on my hands, for obvious reasons.

I couldn't remember the last time anyone had touched me and held me like that. Most of the local escort services had me blacklisted as being too nasty, amongst other reasons (Eckart found this out for me). Vincent used to carry me from my bed to my chair, but that was out of necessity and duty.

I made sure I didn't cry this time. She'd seen me in tears before, she didn't need to have to see me like that at every appointment.

She let me go slowly; I kept my eyes averted from her slightly.

"How doe you feel now?" she asked.

"Dreadful," I said. "Thank you," I added.

"You're welcome."

I'd started sketching again. I'm certainly no Hogarth, but I'm good at simple portraits—this is no 'dumb jock' here. My parents, especially my mother, went to enough trouble with me to see that I had a well-balanced education.

I started roughing out a few things, nothing major, after Nurse Rutherford (that's sort of close to Ratched, isn't it?) had come by that evening to see if my pulse was still beating.

The intercom buzzed again. "Hey, Jerome, you alive in there?" Eckart's deep slightly sandpapery voice.

"Get going, I'm busy," I retorted.

"Doing what? Or do you have company?"

"None of your business. Now be off with you!"

The door opened and Eckart stepped in. I tried to ignore him, but he walked right up to me. He looked down at my pad, cranking his head around to get a better look at it.

"How did you get in here?" I demanded.

He held up a lock pick, pointing at it with his other hand. "One of the tools of my trade. It's helped me out of some tight situations."

He pocketed and leaned over me, resting his pointy chin into my shoulder. "Now what have we here?"

I'd sketched a few things, a circle, a sphere, a cube, a fern frond, an eagle, a female profile. "Oh, just a few scratches."

He leaned over my shoulder, his eye on the female profile. "Looks a little like the Frau Dokter InValid, or am I mistaken?"

"Probably your InValid eyesight."

He grinned in one corner of his mouth. "Sooo, our Diogenes in his barrel has started getting interested, eh? Does she do other things for you besides shrinking your head?"

"Far from it," I said. "It's just a female profile."

"You must be interested, you're getting defensive."

"Now what brought you up here?"

"Just checking up on you like a good friend; you haven't placed an order in a while, so I started to get a little concerned, thought maybe you'd taken a turn for the worse."

"I'm cutting back," I said, glancing at the ashtray on the table at my elbow. I'd only smoked two cigarettes all day.

"Ahhh, doctor's orders?"

"Yes."

He looked me in the eye. "Get a note from her, I'm not convinced. For all I know you could be doing this to get into her good graces—amongst other things."

"For god's sake, she's an Asperger's: she barely knows anything about romance or sex except in the abstract."

"Done your homework on her broken rung, I see."

"Just so I'd know what I was getting into."

He nodded ever so slightly, eyes slitted. "I see." He turned away but he kept his eye on me. "Well, since you obviously don't need me, and so you won't have another second to accuse me of illegal entry, I'll be off with myself."

He went out, closing the door behind him.

I reached for the paper knife to cut out the female profile, but I merely cut out the sheet and stuck it into the back of the pad.

"Why did you choose swimming?" Minerva (Dr. Koestelbaum) asked.

"What makes you ask that?" I asked.

"I'm just curious, trying to fit together all the artifacts that comprise your life."

"Like a number of things, it was Mum's—my mother's idea. Our house was near a pond, and Mum figured it would be impossible to keep me away from it, so almost as soon as I could walk and hold my bladder control, she had me enrolled in swimming classes so I wouldn't drown. I took to it like the proverbial duck takes to water. One of the instructors noticed how strong a swimmer I was even at an early age, so Mum made it a fixture on my schedule."

"You must have enjoyed it."

"Sometimes I felt more at ease on water than on dry land."

"Why is that?"

"I don't know…To put it in a New Age way, I guess I just felt one with the water or something."

"That's a good thing to have: life ultimately arose from water, and our bodies, like the surface of our planet, is comprised two thirds of water. But some people don't have this gift, to feel one with the water."

I didn't doubt it, but the statement seemed a little odd, unless it was just part of the Asperger's.

But she went on. "I'm not one of them, I'm afraid."

"Then how do you take a bath? With a sponge? Roll in dry sand?"

"No, at least it's not that crippling. It's just that I sink like a rock if I try to swim. I can't tell you why I do this, it' just part of who I am, just as being able to commune with the water is part of who you are.

"So who got you into competing?"

"That was my father's idea. He got me a trainer when I was fifteen, an older man, Ewan Muggeridge, a thorough slave driver, but you have to be if you're going to polish the best of the best, and I was the best…should have been the best."

"I was about to ask you about the Olympics, but if you're not ready to talk about that, you don't have to."

"No, you're the one asking all the questions; I'm supposed to answer them."

"You don't have to answer them if they make you too uncomfortable."

"Isn't that what this treatment is all about, making me uncomfortable so that I can eventually straighten out?"

"You don't want to make yourself too uncomfortable, you have to pace yourself."

"There's very little that makes me uncomfortable any more." She said nothing to this, but she had an odd smile as if I'd tripped her lie-o-meter yet again.

"They called me the water sprite because I seemed to just fuse with the water. Regionals, nationals, the European Union, the world championships: people used to say of me that when I showed up at the meet, the rest of the entrants may as well have gone home. Six regional gold medals, five nationals, four European Union titles, three world titles, I was unbeatable, the finest of the finest. Then the Olympics…My father wanted me to enter sooner, but Muggeridge insisted I wasn't ready yet…that was the next challenge."

I paused for dramatic effect.

"What happened there?" she asked, encouraging.

"I don't know what happened. 1,500m freestyle…I gave it my all, my 200%. But the entrant from Kenya bested me by half a second and two tenths of a point."

"That narrow a margin? You must have been disappointed."

"Disappointed didn't begin to describe it. I was _humiliated_. This n-r InValid from Nairobi bested me, for god's sake! Gabriel Mkasa won the gold; Million Euro Morrow got the silver.

"My father was all over my back in the worst way. 'How could you do that? What have you been doing or not doing?'" He ranted at me for months."

"So, in addition to the bad feelings, the disappointment and humiliation of your own you were experiencing, you had to endure your father's reproaches, his disappointment and how he took it out on you."

"If I had a choice, I'd rather that he'd beaten me with his fists instead of cutting me up with the edge of his tongue."

"'Sticks and stones may bruise your bones, but words cut even deeper."

"Exactly."

"What did your mother think of all this?"

"She didn't let on with her own feelings. She kept saying I just had to train harder for the next Olympics, but I knew she was secretly sharing the same feelings as my father."

"This sounds like a silly question, but it's something I've wanted to ask you: Did you ever swim the English Channel?"

"No, that was supposed to follow the Olympic gold I should have struck. But an accident on the highway outside London buggered that dream."

She had an odd look in her eyes, as if her lie-o-meter had been tripped again. I waited for her to start grilling me about the accident. She didn't; perhaps she decided she'd pumped me enough for one session.

I tried to keep the memories where they belonged, in the back of my head where they belonged, but no matter what I did, they kept trying to surface. Things around me just jumped out to remind me: an ad on the 'Net for a tour of London an item in the paper about a road accident...

I figured a couple decent slugs of vodka would black out the images trying to form in my head as I settled down for the night, but I'd been cold sober for too long.

I should have slept like a dead man, but my memory was very much alive…

In my dreams, it was as if it were happening all over again.

It was late in the evening. I was driving home from the city after a long day of training which I wasn't able to put my heart into.

I'd planned it very carefully, make it look like an accident. A nail would pierce the right rear tyre of my car, requiring a simple matter of getting out to change it.

Headlamps glowed in the near distance. I glanced up to see two lights approaching in the gloom.

I looked away, stepped back slightly, the jack in my hand.

The light splashed over me. A horn blared. Brakes screamed.

The left corner of the front bumper struck me in the middle of my spine. Pain shot up my nerves into my skull. Everything flashed bright, then fell to blackness.

I figured I had died, but the worst happened.

Still in the memory, I woke up. I couldn't move. I found myself strapped into a framework that looked like some torture device from a Russian jail.

The nurse in attendance answered my question: My spine had been shattered in two places and the nerve cord had been severed just below my rib cage. The framework was to stabilize my vertebrae while they fused again.

I was in traction for four months. There were surgeries that could have fused my spinal cord, but I was still in too poor condition for that. Besides, I didn't want them. The doctors told me I was lucky to be alive and that the cut in my spine was clean, easily fused. If only I'd taken another step back…

To say I woke up from that long night of remembrance with a hangover is an understatement. My head felt as if someone had been hitting it with a complete bound edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica. The sunlight scalded my eyes sheer through my closed lids. I pulled the covers over my head and stayed put for most of the morning.

At ten, someone lifted the covers from my face. I squinted up at a blur that looked like Nurse Rutherford.

"Have you been drinking again, Jerome?" she asked.

"It was just to help me sleep," I said, covering my face with my arm to block out the light and the sight of her.

"Do you want me to bring a sleeping pill tonight?" she asked.

"No, thanks, I'll be all right."

She brought one anyway, one of these natural things made of herbs. She stayed with me to make sure I took it. Even if she hadn't and I'd stockpiled them, there was not way I could possibly suicide on that stuff.

"Nurse Rutherford called me yesterday to say you'd been drinking again." Minerva—Dr. Koestelbaum—said at the next session the following day. My head had stopped aching, but my eyes were still sore.

"I'm highly unlikely to repeat it," I said. "I lost my knack. I never used to get hungover."

"So why did you relapse?"

"I was trying to keep from remembering the first time…" I told her about the accident that wasn't so accidental.

She listened in silence, her eyes open, rarely blinking, as if that would somehow help her to hear me better.

"I didn't think it was an accident," she said when I had finished.

"What, your lie-o-meter again?"

"Yeah, that started ticking like mad during our last session, but I wanted to give you the benefit of the doubt.

"So, what happened after that? How did your family handle the incident?"

"I had my father fooled at first. For the first time in his life, he actually showed me some genuine sympathy. But my mother somehow put two and two together, especially when I refused the surgery for the severed cord. I expected my father to start berating me all over again. Instead, as soon as my bones had fused, he got me the apartment here in Northern California and settled me here. Get the disappointment out of sight and out of mind. He pays me to stay away."

"No wonder you tried to suicide again," she said. "You have the pain of your own disappointment over the outcome of the Olympics, you have the pain from being handicapped after the accident, and you have the pain of your father pushing you away and sending you to live in a foreign country to get you out of the way. But I'm sensing that there's more."

"I'm afraid I'm not ready to talk about that," I cut in, beating her to her usual disclaimer.

"All right…in that case, I'll tell you something very interesting I dug up since I last spoke to you:

"I did a little research, comparing the scores of the past silver medallists for 1,500m freestyle," she said.

"And what, if anything, did you come up with?" I asked.

"I'll admit it took a lot of heavy lifting, but I know where to look. There's something you need to know: you may have gotten the silver medal, but you set a new record for a silver medallist which still stands after last years Games."

"So what are you trying to tell me: this cloud has a silver lining—no pun intended."

"That's exactly what I'm trying to tell you."

I looked away. "But only you and I know this."

"But you know it, and you should be proud of it."

"That still doesn't fix what happened."

"I know. But it might help change your feelings about what happened. It's just something to think about."

I replied to this with silence.

"So…since your injury and your recovery, what have you done with yourself?"

"Not much. There's little I can do in my condition. I've painted a few still lifes and sold them, added to my income."

"You're an artist? My, you're a regular Renaissance man."

"Mum insisted that I take up painting and calligraphy amongst other things, to keep me from turning into a boor."

"I wish more parents would do that with their kids: when I was in high school, the next door neighbors' kid used to hit on me. He played hockey, and I think that's the only thing he did."

"I know the type, typical of InValid athletes."

She smirked. "He was a Valid."

Oops.

That evening, Eckart came by just before Nurse Rutherford showed up, so he hid himself behind a closet door while she examined me. She never knew he was there: his small size and the tricks of his chosen trade made him virtually disappear. After she'd gone, I almost forgot he was there, until he suddenly stepped out of the closet.

"Quite a broad you got looking after you," he said. He reached into an inner pocket of his too-big trench coat (which he wears all the time, despite the fact that it rains only three months of the year) and drew out a bottle of vodka, which he set on the table beside me. "It's on me: sort of a keep-up-the-good-work present in case you need it."

I pushed it back to him. "I don't need it."

He stepped up to me, felt my brow—his palm felt clammy and cold on my skin—then checked my pulse.

"Jerome the metronome the doctors must call you," he said. Looking me in the eye he added, "I see we are on the mend."

Four months had passed since Vincent/Jerome had left. From what I had heard, he would be three months from his destination. From time to time, I used to look up at the night sky from my window and wonder a little how he was faring up there.

For some strange reason, a copy of _Astronomy Today_ turned up in the waiting room of Minerva—Dr. Koestelbaum's—office. I picked it up idly and leafed through it.

The cover article was about the moons of Saturn. A two-page spread of a computer-designed chart of the planet and its satellites caught my attention. My fingertip found Titan, a small greenish-goldish orb.

I turned over the page and found a sidebar about the mission to Titan, which featured an in-flight photograph of some of its crew, including "Navigator 2nd class, Jerome Morrow", at work.

At that moment, Minerva—Dr. Koestelbaum—came into the room. I set the magazine aside a little too quickly.

"I saw you reading that astronomy magazine," she noted once we got inside her office. "Thinking of reaching for the stars?"

"I was just glancing through it," I said. "It reminded me of something."

"Reminded you of what?" she asked.

"It reminded me of a friend of mine…an InValid I once knew, fellow by the name of Vincent Freemen…He was born in the wrong era. He had dreams, that one, dreams as big as the universe. He'd have made something of himself if he'd been born in the pre-genome era. But the cracks in his rungs held hm back.

"So I loaned him my ladder. Granted, he looked nothing like me—his hair was lighter than mine and his eyes weren't half as pretty as mine—but who looks at the photos on ID's any more? He needed my genetics to get into the training center at the Gattaca Aeronautics Institute, since they have the most meticulous genetic screening and security methods: Blood samples, urine samples, you name it. He couldn't risk leaving behind any of his own genetic debris, stray hairs or loose skin cells, so every morning he was up at the crack of dawn, scrubbing himself down with a dry brush in a small incineration chamber set up in my apartment and so destroy all trace of his genetic identity.

"While he was out during the day, working and training at the institute, I prepared the samples he would need: scrubbing off skin cell samples and collecting them with a small vacuum to fill tiny containers he would discreetly empty in likely places at the institute; combing out loose hairs, drawing blood with which he would fill small fingertip sachets. The urine samples were the simplest to collect, since it's already collected in a pouch I wear strapped to my leg under my trousers.

"Oh, I even had to record my heartbeat so he could playback the sound over a small "amplifier" on his chest during physical training sessions: he had a dicky heart, a murmur or something like that, whereas mine's as regular as clockwork. So we had to mask that little quirk of his, otherwise he'd blow his cover."

"So how long did this last?"

"Eighteen months…eighteen of the craziest months of my life. But it gave me something with which to fill the hours of my endless days. He borrowed my body: I borrowed his dreams.

"But you know what they say about the best laid plans of mice and men going all awry. One of the directors at the institute was found beaten to death with a computer keyboard. They called in the FBI to investigate, and this was just a week or so before Vincent was to leave on the mission to Titan. The Hoovers, as they call the agents who went in to investigate, found a stray eyelash near the crime scene, a loose one Vincent must have failed to scrub off that morning and which conveniently dropped off him when he joined the crowd of onlookers gathering around the director's mangled corpse.

"So of course they found it belonged to one Vincent Freeman, an InValid who had previously worked at the institute as a janitor, but who had left nearly three years before. Of course they implicated him; they sent one of their agents to question me when he was out, but they found me instead. Because Vincent was using the upstairs of my apartment, I had to literally drag myself up the stairs. He cost me a lot of trouble, that youngster."

"But you helped him fulfill his dream."

"At what cost? Before he left, I made up a lifetime supply of genetic samples so he'd never have to rely on me again. He had a purpose in life. I had a lifetime of emptiness, as far as I could see. He could reach for the stars and touch them; I can't even stand erect. He has a life to live. I know that I was helping him to live a lie, but my conscience isn't a sensitive one."

"We'll put the moral implications aside for now: You helped Vincent fulfill his dream; very few people in his position get that kind of help."

"Except you."

"I could have been in his place. I could have ended up borrowing someone else's ladder. But I didn't have to."

"Some folk get the lucky breaks. Vincent Freeman wasn't one of them."

"Sure he did: he met you."

"He used me!" I retorted. "I prostituted my genome for him."

"But now he's going where he once only dreamed of going, where very few people—even Valids—have gone, even though we have more manned flights each day than there used to be in a year. You gave each other validation."

"What?"

"I said you gave each other's lives validation. I think you met Vincent Freeman for a reason."

"Why, to remind me of how closed in I am?"

"Yes…and no. He touched your life so you could restart your dream."

"My dream, if you wrote that down on your yellow pad, was to strike gold. Now I can't walk or empty my bladder like a normal adult…or hold my own with a woman."

"I was going to ask you someday if you ever had a girlfriend."

I shook my head. "I had plenty of female admirers, but I never had time when I was training. Now it goes without saying."

"Do you have any other friends besides Vincent?"

"I have a couple old friends back in England who write me from time to time. I suppose I could add Fillip-Josef Eckart, but I don't let on about him."

"Why not?"

"He's a black market racketeer, something of a hacker, a part-time pimp of sorts. Not the breed of character you write home about. He gets me a discount on a few items you can't find in the bargain stores."

"I see," she said, astutely. "I suppose we all have a friend at one point or other in our lives whose presence is a guilty pleasure. When I was in medical school, I was friendly with a girl who was a stripper. One thing that brought us together was the fact that we were both a little weird each in our own way and we didn't judge each other for it."

"I suppose you could class my friendship with Vincent a mutual weirdness society: he's an InValid, I'm a crippled Valid."

"I see you're still using that word," she noted. "Let me share something with you." She got up and went to her desk.

She came back and put a laminated card in my hands "This is something I use myself. Call it what you want: a prayer a meditation, a mantra. It's helped me. If you like, we can read it together."

I looked at the card. "Why not?" I shrugged.

 _"God grant me the Serenity to accept the things I cannot change; Courage to change the things I can; and Wisdom to know the difference."_

I shook my head. "I don't believe in God."

"Why not?"

"Because as far as I'm concerned, He walked out on our species a very long time ago."

She wagged her head. "It would appear that way at times. But I think He's letting us grow in the best way possible by finding things out for ourselves. Even if you don't believe in Him, He believes in you. If nothing else, ask a Higher Power to help you out."

"Maybe I should have this thing tattooed on my arm," I said.

"If that helps you remember it best," she said, smiling with laughter.

I went home and dug up my calligraphy set. I spent much of that afternoon and early evening rendering the meditation in the manner of a 13th century illuminated manuscript.

Next day, I ventured out to a frame shop and bought a gilded wood frame for it.

I hung the illuminated copy in a prominent place in the front room where I couldn't possibly fail to see it.

I started on another, simpler design for the bedroom, later that day, when the charwoman came in with her dust mop.

I looked up from my pad to see her leaning down, studying the illuminated copy I'd just hung up.

"Mr. Morrow, sir, did you draw this?" she asked, cautiously. I usually ignore her presence.

"Yes…do you like it?" This was the most I'd ever spoken to her at once. I wondered where that came from.

"Oh yes! the colors are so pretty, like jewels," she said. She's a simple sort, the type I usually go out of my way to avoid because I find them so aggravating. But her artless little comment penetrated. I've heard people gush over my artwork, part of me has always wondered if they really meant it. This woman could just about put a clumsy sentence together and somehow it had more depth to it than all the fine phraseology of a roomful of art connoisseurs.

"Thanks," I managed.

When she had gone, I meditated on the words. That first part I was tempted to put in second place, so that it started off with "Courage to change the things I can", but when I tried to put it all together that way, I barked up against the last phrase, "Wisdom to know the difference". I realized that as intelligent as I was, I utterly lacked the wisdom to know what I really needed, to know what I could change and what I couldn't.

At the next session, Dr. Koestelbaum asked me if I'd been meditating on the Serenity prayer.

"So far as I know, I can't change the fact that I'm paraplegic," I said. "I've probably waited too bloody long for the surgery to do any good."

"I don't know about that: I have a friend who's a neurosurgeon who's had some success curing paraplegics with nerve grafts grown from adult stem cells," she said.

"I just had an idea."

"What?"

"I found out at age twenty-one that my parents had three embryos made when they made me. Perhaps one of them is sill extant. They get stem cells from those, don't they?"

"Not as much as they used to." A pause. "Jerome, you just don't want to go there."

"Why not? It would be ideal: the tissue would be a perfect match."

"For starters, those embryos are very small human beings; they have a human genome. They just have to develop and grow into full-size human persons. And for that matter, even if they weren't, you'd jeopardize your health and the outcome of the operation."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean ESC's, embryonic stem cells and tissue grown from them, have caused the development of teratomas, pre- and protocarcinomic tumors."

"Excuse me, I speak five languages including Esperanto, but whatever it is you're babbling there, that's not one of them."

"Sorry, I do that by habit, I'm afraid. In layman's terms, it means if you got a nerve graft from embryo stem cells, your spinal cord would turn cancerous and you'd be back in the wheelchair again, with your spine rotting away from cancer. Your last state would be worse than you are now."

God, she could be as blunt as I could.

"So what about adult stem cells?" I asked

"Nothing has been known to result from those and they've been using them much more than they've used ESCs, for about fifty years now."

"In that case, maybe I should look into that…But have I waited too long?"

"There's only one way you can find that out."

"And that is?"

She leaned close, looking deep into my eyes. "I think you're smart enough to know what that is."

To be continued…

Literary Easter Egg:

"the Flytes of Marchmain"—I swiped this from Evelyn Waugh's _Brideshead Revisited_ because I like the names.


	3. Neurofusion

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> +J.M.J.+

+J.M.J.+

Flesh of My Flesh

By "Matrix Refugee"

Author's Note:

Funny thing about this fic is that I never intended to write it in the first place. I was working peacefully on my "A.I." fics and submitting jokes and things to "Readers' Digest" and other magazines, but I kept having floaters of ideas for this which just would NOT go away. So I did what I always do with a pesky idea: I jotted it down for future reference. But then I kept getting more ideas, and then I heard an excellent talk on stem cell research by an ethicist and I wondered if I should pursue writing this…and that's why you're able to read this next chapter. Oh, if I got any medical information wrong, please bear with me: I'm a fic writer, not a doctor.

Disclaimer:

See chapter I. I don't own the words to "Bridge over Troubled Water", which belong to Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel, although I modified them slightly.

Chapter III

Neuro-fusion

Minerva—Dr. Koestelbaum—continued to surprise me in ways even I couldn't anticipate.

"I won't be here next week since I'm having some surgery over the weekend and I won't be up to snuff for a few days," she said at the end of one Thursday appointment. "Can you last till the following week?"

"Oh, I'll find ways to pack my already overcrowded schedule so I won't have time for a third suicide attempt," I said.

"Same time, same days of the week?" she asked.

I shrugged. "It'll be easier for us both to remember."

She jotted a notation on her planner in pencil, then wrote the dates and times in pen on a card which she handed to me.

"Thank you." I added, "Just to be a nuisance, what kind of surgery is it?"

"It's some leg surgery I've been putting off," she said. That didn't sound exactly sincere, or maybe I'd just picked up some of her lie-o-meter skills.

Leg surgery, I thought, during the cab ride home. What on earth did she need that for? Her legs were fine as far as I could see (Which wasn't far, what with the loose, flowing garments she always wore). If one of us needed surgery, it was I. And how did she get in so quick? InValids usually didn't get placed high on the priority list at most hospitals, unless of course this was something that had been in the works for a while.

In the interim, I had an appointment for a physical with Lockheed, my primary physician. In the course of the examination, I asked him for his opinion on whether I was fit for spinal surgery, the "neuro-fusion" which Minerva—Dr. Koestelbaum—had mentioned during our last session, which she had said might be a possible course of action for me to take. Lockheed ran the usual sensory/reflex tests on me: touching the tips of my toes with a blunt needle, running a key along the soles of my feet and the insides of my thighs. I had some feeling in my right leg, but nothing in my left.

"I think Minerva's onto something. It may be just what you need to get you out of the dumps and back on your feet—maybe in more ways than one," he said.

"But what if it doesn't work?" I asked.

"It's best if you go into this with the thought that it might not work. It's one of those things you can't know unless you've tried it."

"Can you refer me to someone?"

"I can: Rainier Drexel, a young fellow from Vrilitaria, over in Eastern Europe. He studied over here, specialized in neuro-fusion. You'll be in the world's best hands for this procedure. There's no one better."

Lockheed somehow "greased the skids" so that I got an appointment for an MRI and a briefing with Dr. Drexel.

Drexel was a small man not much older than I, dark-haired and dark-skinned like a Gypsy, with the smallest, most delicate hands I have ever seen on a man, good hands for a surgeon: those slim little fingers would fit well into small crevices.

"I have gone over the zscans from your MRI, andt I think you are an ideal candidate for this zsurgery," Drexel said.

"But isn't there a lot of damage?"

He wagged his head and shoulders. "There is some scar tissue, but nodt so much that it cannot be cleared away. The cut itself is clean: fusing your axons, your spinal cells, with the donor cells should be an easy task."

"Are you certain?"

"I am quite certain."

I licked my lips. "Will I be able to walk again?" I asked.

"With sufficient care during the healing process, and with proper physical therapy, you should be able to walk again, perhaps with some slight assistance, perhaps unassisted. But the key to your recovery is your attitude toward it. Have you a good reason for this surgery?"

I had a dozen reasons: to be able to look people in the eye, on a level; to swim, to fulfill the dream I had nearly smothered…

"I want to walk," I said.

"Good reason," he said. "I understand your condition led you to a suicide attempt?" He asked this utterly without judgment, just wanting to clarify the data.

"Yes, I'm afraid."

"Are you in counseling for this?"

"Yes, I'm working with an excellent psychologist, Minerva Koestelbaum."

His dark eyes sparkled. "Ah yes! She and I know each other well."

I gathered he was the specialist she had mentioned once, but I wisely didn't let on that I knew about their connections.

A few days later, I had my next session with Minerva; she let me call her that, but in my mind she was still Dr. Koestelbaum.

She was hobbling around her office, holding onto things for support, as she approached me.

"Pardon my limp: I'm healing very well: I just have to have the stitches out and then I'll be back to my old self," she said, leading me into the office proper.

"Are you sore?" I asked, as she sat down.

"A little, but it's good pain."

I glanced at her legs, wondering what she could have had done. She still wore her Pakistani gear, which made it nearly impossible for me to tell what she'd had done. She didn't seem like the type who'd go in for liposuction—or that she would need it for that matter.

I told her how I was going in for neuro-fusion surgery, as soon as they could find a stem cell donor that matched (mostly English with a touch of Irish and German).

"But even if they find a donor that matches, it might take a few days: they have to differentiate the cells and get a sufficient number ready to implant. It could take a week or two before they call you back."

"Don't remind me: every time I think of how long it could take, I swear my legs start to itch."

"That's something I've been meaning to ask you, but I wanted to wait till you were ready to answer it: how extensive is your loss of nerve function? Do you have any sensation below your injury?"

"I can sometimes feel heat and cold and touch in my right leg, but the left one may as well not be there at all."

"You realize there's a chance this might not work, the injury may be too extensive," she warned.

"I'm aware of that. I've actually been telling myself it just might be a miserable failure, so I won't be too disappointed when it is."

"But you know, that kind of attitude just might cause you to fail. A certain amount of mind over matter is healthy."

"But isn't that magical thinking?"

She smiled, with a trace of knowing mischief. "I see you did your homework."

I shrugged. "Just to pass the time."

She leaned toward me slowly. "Even if it doesn't work out completely, you'll at least have made the effort, and that's better than sitting on your rear not doing anything to try and fix it. Jerome, no matter how it turns out, I just want you to remember one thing."

"What's that?"

"There is no gene for the human spirit."

I was about to open my mouth to say 'What is that supposed to mean?', but I realized this might be a new meditation she wanted me to consider.

I went home wondering what in hell or heaven that meant.

Two weeks later I got The Call from Drexel.

"We have a group of axons with your name on them, Jerome," he told me, with a trace of playfulness.

"Thank God! How soon can we get the bloody operation done?"

"What about…tomorrow at noon?"

"I'll be there with bells on," I said.

"You realize what this shall entail: you will be in recovery, largely immobile for at least a month afterward, and then after that, you will need a few months of physical therapy."

"If I'm on my own two feet by the end of it all, I'll have the operation done without anesthesia, if that's what it takes."

"No, you would not want it done that way," Drexel said, chiding me.

I made arrangements with my charwoman and with Eckart to take care of my apartment (Eckart had been forbidden to spend more than six hours at a time in my rooms. I arranged that with the superintendent.).

Later that afternoon, Drexel came by my apartment to brief me on what I needed to do before the surgery: no alcohol for 24 hours (I was abstaining anyway, no matter), don't eat anything after six hours before the surgery. I took it all in stride (if only I could walk…).

Next morning, before I left, I called Minerva to give her the good news.

"Hello, Dr. Koestelbaum speaking."

"Minerva, it's Jerome Morrow. Listen, I've some good news to share for a change: I'm on my way in for neuro-fusion surgery."

"That's great to hear! Did Drexel find the right donor?"

"They got a batch of cells with the right match, same blood-type, same ethnic mix."

"That's excellent. You must be excited."

"Excited doesn't begin to describe it…My cab should be coming soon."

"I'll let you go then. Take care and don't be too hard on yourself."

"I won't, I won't."

I had one moment of fear as the nurses prepped me for the surgery. They had me lying flat on my face, with my head propped up as they wheeled me in. they'd already given me a jag of nitrous oxide, but that seemed to be wearing off.

"Can't I have the jab in the leg? I won't feel it then," I pleaded.

"We would, but the veins aren't good there," the one nurse, a husky young man told me. I was glad when they covered up that the lower half of me: I'd been off my pins so long the muscles had shriveled so badly that my thighs had shrunk smaller than my knees.

Drexel had an MP3 player going in the operating room when they got me in. An old Simon and Garfunkel song played, some female artist, whose husky alto voice I didn't recognize, singing "Bridge over Troubled Waters".

"Sail on, silver boy,

Sail on by.

Your time has come to shine,

All your dreams are on their way.

See how they shine.

If you need a friend,

I'm sailing right behind.

Like a bridge over troubled waters,

I will ease your mind…"

I don't know if it was the nitrous oxide the nurses gave me to calm my nerves, but I found myself really listening to those words. Silver boy…it was as if someone had adjusted those lyrics with me in mind, or maybe someone like me. My fears started to subside. I thought of Minerva, I thought of Vincent/Jerome, their faces passing through my mind's eye without much effort on my part. Minerva sailing right behind me, guiding me toward the open waters, Vincent showing me that I could reach up, as he had done, only circumstances didn't force me to wear a mask. I was listening so intently that I hardly noticed when the anesthetist tied off my arm and delivered the jab.

My head felt light. Sounds started to echo slightly. I don't remember anything more after that…

It felt like days. Drexel later told me it lasted only two hours, opening me up, separating my vertebrae, clearing away the scar tissue, injecting the donor axons into the cut, applying the fibrin, the biological "glue" that would hold them in place while the cells grew and fused with my axons.

I slowly came back to this world, but my eyes felt glued shut. Someone was washing my face with a warm, damp washcloth. I managed to peel my eyes open.

A nurse who could have been Nurse Rutherford's identical twin stood over me. I glanced beyond her.

Minerva stood in the open doorway. I managed a wavering smile to her.

They had me wedged in between some large pillows that seemed bolted to the mattress somehow, apparently to keep me in place, on my side, until my wound closed.

"Hey, gorgeous, what time is it?" I said, none too enthusiastically.

"Three-thirty, sonny," the nurse said, coolly. "Yer shrink is here to see you." With that, Nurse Rutherford II went out.

Minerva came and sat down by the bedside.

"How do you feel?" she asked.

"Like that car hit me again," I said. I craned my neck around trying to peer over my shoulder. "What's back there?"

"Here, let me help you," she took a mirror from the bedside table and turned it toward the middle of my back.

A square of bandaging slightly larger across than my hand covered the middle of my spine.

"It's just a small incision, they call it a keyhole," she said.

"It feels as if they cut me open with a shovel," I said.

"I can tell you're healing already."

"How?"

"You're acting more like a wounded tiger than you usually do," she said, smiling.

"Is that good or bad?" I asked.

The next morning, a huge basket of flowers showed up with a note from my parents. That evening, Eckart came to see me. He peered out into the hallway, then produced from inside his trench coat a pair of champagne flutes and a bottle of Veuve Cliquot, which he set on the bedside table.

"A toast to your continued recovery," he said.

I waved it aside. "Thanks, Eckart, but I can't. Doctor's orders."

"Why the hell?"

"My bloodstream's full of painkillers and antihistamines, so my system won't reject the donor tissue."

"Oh, doing a little ladder borrowing yourself, eh?" he said, peeling the foil off the bottle anyway.

"I'd hardly call it that," I said.

He took out his Swiss army knife, unfolded the corkscrew and worked it into the cork. He somehow pulled the cork without too much racket, which would have got the nurses wondering, and filled one of the glasses.

"You sure you don't want any?" he asked, holding the neck of the bottle over the other glass.

"I'm certain," I said.

He raised the one glass. "So what do they call this procedure?"

"Neuro-fusion."

"To neuro-fusion," he said, and drank.

"So, how soon you gonna be back on your feet?" he asked.

"I have to stay like this for a month, then Drexel removes the wire stabilizing my vertebrae. From there, it's physical therapy, depending on how I heal. For now, it's just a matter of waiting for the donor cells to take and grow."

"Maybe a little incentive 'll help speed the process," he said. He reached into another pocket of his coat and drew out a photograph of a girl and a copy of her National ID card. "Her name's Eulalia. She's a second class Valid and she's dying to meet you."

I pushed it away. "Thank you, but no: I have other incentives."

He pursed his lips and smiled, a very tight, compact smile. "I imagine you do. Is it that head-shrinker of yours?"

"No, I just want to walk again." My ears wondered what I had said.

"Indeed," he murmured. He glanced at my lower back. "You gonna let me see what they did to you?"

"There's little to see," I said, reaching back and pulling open the back of my gown.

He leaned over, narrowing his eyes at the bandages. "Looks nasty."

"It was only a very small incision," I said.

He looked at me dead on, his black eyes looking into my green ones. "Would you want me to find out who donated their cells to you?"

"No. If they want to come forward, that's for them to decide."

"Oh, come on! You want to know. You want the data. You want the name and genotype of the person whose cells are now growing into your spine," he said, his gravel voice suddenly gone suave and silken.

I was tempted to reply "yes". I wanted to know who had the charity or the bleeding-heart sentimentality to give some of their stem cells. Maybe one day I could walk up to them and look them in the eye as I thanked them for saving my life. In my dreams…

"I take your long silence as a resounding 'yes!'," he said with a smug smile.

"I didn't say that," I shot back, too harshly and too quickly.

He grinned at me and reached down to pat my head. I yanked my head away from him, glaring up at him.

"Ah, you do want it you green-eyed little darling. You want it."

He pocketed the bottle of champagne and went out.

Minerva came up the next afternoon to check on me. I told her about Eckart's proposition.

"I can get that information much quicker than he can, and I can get it legitimately," she said, a twinkle glinting in one eye. "Maybe we can give this Mr. Eckart a taste of his own medicine."

"What, counterhack him?"

"I have a friend who could help me do that," she said.

"That couldn't please me more—except if I healed faster than they keep telling me I will."

The fourth day after my surgery, two shadows darkened the door to my room.

"Eugene?" my mother's voice asked, I had been dozing, but I snapped awake and propped myself on my elbow.

Mum came to the side of the bed, hovering, her hands clasping and unclasping as if they didn't know what to do.

"How are you feeling?" she asked.

"Better," I said. She leaned down and hugged me, keeping her body away from mine.

"How did the procedure go?" my father asked, eying the data chart on the foot of the bed.

"I don't know, I slept through it," I said.

"You know what I meant. Were there any complications? Any post-operative swelling?"

"No, the surgery went almost by the textbook, or at least that's how Dr. Drexel put it."

"Where did he go to medical school? Where did he intern?"

"He studied at Harvard medical, I think, and he interned at Tufts in Pasadena," I said. "Lockheed told me you can't get anyone better than Drexel for this kind of treatment."

"And where is he from?"

"Vrilitaria, I think, but he speaks English better than I do."

At this point, Minerva came into the room to check on me, but she excused herself and started to step out of the room.

"I'm sorry, I'll be back," she said.

"No, come right in, please. Father, Mum, this is Minerva Koestelbaum, the psychologist I'm going to," I said. "Minerva, these are my parents, Charlton, my father, and Estelle, my mum."

She was wearing rimless glasses that day, which gave her an oddly more intelligent look. Mum accepted Minerva's handshake with her usual uncertain warmth, but my father kept his hands in his coat pockets, his eyes on Minerva's glasses.

"Are you truly qualified to treat anyone with any emotional difficulties?" my father asked.

"I have a doctorate degree in psychology; I did my thesis on socio-environmental stress," she said, smiling. But I could still see the suspicion in my father's eyes.

Later, when my parents had gone out for lunch, Minerva spoke to me at length.

"I should have warned you if ever they should turn up," I said. "My father's a genomist."

"I noticed. Don't worry, I'm used to it—after a fashion."

"Aren't you going to ask me?"

"Ask you what?"

"If I think I'm a genomist.

"You tell me."

"I guess I am, a little. After all, I lost the gold to an InValid, and another InValid stood on my shoulders to reach for the stars."

"To some extent, it works both ways. I know a lot of InValids who are really suspicious of Valids."

"That goes without saying, they're the lesser class." I bit my tongue. "I'm sorry, that always happens when I've been around my father."

"At least you recognize the problem. That puts you one step closer to overcoming that."

I spent my days reading, since this was the only activity I could do while lying on my side wedged between two huge pillows. The nurses turned me over regularly to keep me from developing sores, but between that, I downloaded the longest books I could find onto my e-book reader: Tolstoy's _War and Peace_ , Tolkien's _Lord of the Rings_ (I even read the appendices), several dictionary-thick anthologies, philosophy tomes, anything to make the hours move.

Gradually, without my notice at first, a change took place in my body. I started to feel my left leg again. Drexel and his intern, Ms. Verfaillie checked me every day, testing my reflexes.

At the beginning of the third week, when Drexel touched the toes of my left foot with a blunt needle, I felt it, a light pricking at my flesh, almost so slight I thought I imagined it.

"Do that again, harder," I begged.

"Very well." He pricked me again.

I gasped. I had felt it.

He ran a key up the sole of my foot: my toes flared back.

We looked at each other. "This is but the start, Jerome. Give it more time," he warned.

When no one was watching, I made up my mind to make a small test of my own.

I had to put my whole being into it, since the muscles had atrophied. I just about had to do "mind over matter", but I did it.

I moved my right foot by itself.

A few days later, they sent me up for another MRI, to see how I was healing. Afterward, Drexel showed me the images.

He brought up on the screen of his desk one of the earlier MRIs as a comparison.

"This was the MRI you had a few weeks before the procedure: this white area here," he pointed to it, is the discontinuity, the cut in your spinal cord." He brought up the new image, from the same angle as the first. "This is today's scan: no discontinuity." He looked at me. "This means the donor axons, the new cells, have grown into your spine and fused the damage."

"Then I'm healed?"

He wagged his head. "That much has healed. What remains to be seen is how much ability you have regained."

Drexel had me started on hydrotherapy the next day. The therapist working with me, Keaton Olson, told me the water would help support my limbs and help me get back the muscle tone I had lost in my legs.

"But I'm sure the water's a second home to you," Olson said as he helped me into the pool.

"Why, what makes you…?"

"You were in the Olympics some time back, weren't you? You got the silver, or am I thinking of another guy from England?"

"No, that's me," I admitted.

"Cool. Not every day I get to work with an Olympian."

At the risk of sounding mushy, being in the water again felt like coming home. Granted, we stayed in the shallows, where the water came just to my waist sitting down, but I was able to start moving my limbs freely again, by themselves, not grabbing my leg by the ankle and yanking it into position.

Olson looked me in the face. "You can cry if you need to, if it feels that good."

"I'm all right," I said.

He put his huge hand on my shoulder. "Let it out, bro, let it out."

I shed a tear or two, but I was too exhausted from relief and sheer determination to do much more.

They moved me to a long term care facility, not a nursing home in the classic sense of one of these old folks colonies, but a residency for young folk in that between stage of the healing process. My father had seen to it that I got a room of my own, to make sure I didn't get messed up with—oh the horror!—another InValid, but I would have welcomed the company.

My legs grew stronger day by day. Olson had found a masseur to massage my limbs and lower back to keep me limber and get me back to form. When no one was looking, I massaged my legs myself. To feel my hands on the skin of my legs, and to feel that skin feeling my hands back… my legs no longer felt like foreign objects, like vestigial organs.

After two weeks, Olson had me take the next step—literally—and got me started walking. Granted, I was relying on the support of parallel bars, but I was walking. The soles of my feet touched the floor; at each step, my toes gripped the textured rubber tread under me, my heels planted, my weight spread along my foot to the balls of my feet.

Six steps…seven…I came to the end of the parallel bars, and turned, with a little help from Olson, to walk back.

I had two therapy sessions a day, one in the morning and one in the afternoon, but they didn't feel like enough. But Olson said I had to pace myself.

"You haven't walked in like, what, two years?"

"Nearly four," I said.

"I bet yer itchin' to make up for it," he said. "And I bet you wanna get back to swimmin'."

"Hell, yes!"

He patted my back. "One step at a time, fella, one step at a time."

A few days later, Olson tried me on crutches, but I was clearly stronger than that.

"You're ready for a walker," he declared.

I narrowed my eyes at him. "My legs may be ready for that, but I'm not."

"What? Oh, I see," he grinned. "Yeah, I know why you'd be hesitant. You're a prrropahr Inglishmin. Cahn't 'ave wun awv th(eh)ose _awe_ ful chrrrome and graiy plehstick awebjects."

"Yeah, could you, like, find me something reeeally cool lookin'? An' while yer at it, could you just, like, okay, go, like easy on that, like, sooo fake-sounding California accent?"

"You got it," he said.

He obtained for me an elegant, streamlined affair on casters all in black metal, the sort of thing I wasn't embarrassed to be seen using in public. No one would remember my face and I'd largely been in hiding during the day through the two years I'd shared my life with Vincent.

With Olson at my side, I ventured out for a walk. I was still a little self-conscious, so I went incognito—sunglasses and a fedora jammed down on my head.

Eventually, the physical therapy sessions tapered off to three sessions a week. I was mobile once again. My left leg still had a tendency toward weakness, but I was on my feet.

"I've seen you walking around town," Minerva said during on of my sessions with her. "You look great."

"Thanks," I said, with an honest smile. "I guess you can add my case to your list of miracles."

"Oh, I really don't have one. You initiated that miracle anyway."

"I did?" I asked, incredulous.

She nodded.

I was strong enough and self-reliant enough that they discharged me from long-term recovery and sent me home.

The moment I walked into my apartment, before I unpacked my suitcase, I went to the foot of the spiral staircase that led to the second level of the apartment. I pushed away my walker and grabbed at the handrails. I set my left foot on the bottom step and pulled myself up. I realized I was still bearing a lot of my weight on my hands, so I shifted my weight, letting my feet take the burden as I climbed the stairs, walking up the stairs, not crawling up the stairs on my belly like a snake, but actually walking, like a man.

I sat down on the top step when I reached the top, breathing hard not from exertion, but from the sobs of delight trying to escape my lungs.

Around the beginning of December, I finally graduated from the walker to a cane. Olson got me a metal one encase in wood composite so that it didn't look quite so pre-fabricated. Anything else wouldn't have matched the rest of me.

One night around this time, someone knocked at the door of my apartment. I got up and hobbled to the door to see who it could be.

I opened the door to find Eckart there, grinning up at me.

"Mind if I come in for a minute?" he asked.

"In that case, you have exactly sixty seconds to tell me why you're here and to get out," I said. I was trying to scale back on how much time I spent with Eckart.

"All right, if yer gonna put it that way, maybe I should just give you the delivery without briefing you on it." He reached inside his coat and pulled out an envelope which he handed to me. "I'll tell you this much: you wanted it a while back, and I had a hell of a time trying to get the goods."

I took the envelope. He tipped his hat to me and swaggered away.

I shut the door, then opened the envelope. Inside was a single, folded sheet of paper. I drew it out.

From: mkoestelbaum

To: rdrexell .org

Subject: My recent stem cell donation.

Dear Rainer,

I have kept you informed about recent developments regarding the treatment of a patient of mine suffering from chronic apathetic dysthymia related to the subject's paraplegia resulting from severe trauma to the subject's spinal cord. Said subject had considered surgical treatment, specifically neuro-fusion for the damage to his spine, via the implantation of ASC derived axons. I am sending some of the ASC's I donated which Mendahl recently differentiated. Please use them specifically for the subject, Jerome Eugene Morrow, a male Valid, should he ever finalize his decision to undergo neuro-fusion treatment.

I remain yours sincerely,

M. Koestelbaum, Ph.D.

The axons of my spine stopped transmitting to my legs for a second. I sank down to the floor, my legs buckling under me. My eyes fast-scanned the email.

Next day found me at Minerva's office.

"So how was your Thanksgiving—I'm sorry, I forgot you probably don't celebrate it."

"No, I'm an English national. I never applied for citizenship… But everything that's happened to me these past months is something to be thankful for. I'd like to know the person who gave me those stem cells to heal my spine."

"What would you do?"

I looked right at her. "I shake her hand."

She stood up; I pulled myself to my feet. She held out her hand to me. I clasped it, nerveless.

She looked up into my eyes. Her brow puckered. "You knew."

I bent my head. "Eckart got the information. He found your email to Drexel. If you like, I'll throttle him for it."

"No, don't do anything violent."

"I'm sorry if I spoiled it for you."

"No, it's okay."

My free hand went to my back, touching my spine where I knew the scar was. I looked into her eyes. Her cells… _her_ cells had healed me.

"Why did you do this?" I asked.

"I knew you wanted it, needed it. I'm here to help you however I can, Jerome. So…I thought perhaps this was best way."

She put her other hand behind me, touching the hand that touched my spine, her fingers spread.

"Your cells are part of me now," I realized aloud. "How did you get away with this?"

She smiled. "Like your friend Mr. Eckart, I have my own set of connections."

"But…what about…our genetics?" I asked, not wanting to sound like a ninny.

"Don't worry, you're not gonna catch Asperger's from me. There's going to be critics, but they don't have to know, do they? And even if they find out, does it matter what they think?"

"No," I declared. "But…why did you choose to help me like this?"

Her hand closed on mine, the hand on my spine. "I chose because I care. Not just about Jerome Eugene Morrow the patient, but about Jerome Eugene Morrow the man." She dropped her gaze and released me. But I couldn't release her.

To be continued…

Literary Easter Eggs:

Names—Verfaillie is the last name of a scientist who has been very successful differentiating adult stem cells into complicated cells like neurons and axons (spinal neurons). Olson is the last name of a Swedish neurosurgeon who recently found a way to treat paraplegia in laboratory rats with spinal cord injuries (even ones with severed s.c's). Mendahl is a debauchment of "Mendel", who first researched heredity, which set the stage for modern genetic research. And one less meaningful: Koestelbaum is the original German form of the name Castlebaum, a name I borrowed from a character in the PAX-TV show "Just Cause", which I've been watching very zealously. I'm assuming Minerva probably pronounces it like "Kestle-bom" or "Kerstle-bowm", which is closer to the German pronunciation.


	4. Vindication

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> +J.M.J.+

+J.M.J.+

Flesh of My Flesh

By "Matrix Refugee"

Author's Note:

I'm glad this fic has been so well received; there were a lot of misgivings flying around in my head when I started writing it, but those have been dispelled by everyone's reviews. Special thanks goes to "Juni Cortez" (Cool name! [And yes, I know it comes from "Spy Kids"]), who's been the most encouraging. A couple musical reference for this chapter, for those of you who have the CD of Michael Nyman's excellent score for this film: the cuts entitled "Becoming Jerome", "The One Moment", and "The Other Side".

Disclaimer:

See chapter I

Chapter IV

Vindicated

A new year deserves new dreams…

The day before New Year's Eve, I had another session with Minerva—Dr. Koestelbaum.

"So, there's a whole new year ahead of us: what are you planning to do with it?" she asked me.

"I'm working toward finding a job," I said. "My father has insinuated he may be ending my allowance, but I know my mother would keep me on it. Their Christmas/birthday gift this year was paying for my surgery and my therapy."

"If you're looking for a job that's in your field, my cousin Gerd told me there's a job opening at the Y this summer as a swimming instructor. He works there as a program director."

"It sounds interesting, but I don't know if I could do it."

"Why? What's holding you back?"

I wagged my head. "My disability, my status."

"Which status, social or genetic?"

To be honest, she had me stumped there.

To keep from being alone on New Year's Eve, I went out to a restaurant in a hotel that night. I have to be honest, but I felt a bit shy, so I decided to settle on being the mysterious dark gentleman in the corner, watching the festivities. I thought I spotted Minerva, in a long maroon velvet evening gown, but I couldn't be sure. About half an hour before midnight, I stepped outside into the courtyard garden for a breath of air and to get a look at the stars. I'd never been much of a stargazer and I still didn't know all their names, but—excuse the mushiness—but Vincent/Jerome had taught me to look up at them. All I could tell anyone for sure was that one of them was Saturn and I knew someone who, as of recently, had set foot on one of the moons circling it.

As I stood there, leaning on my stick, looking up, I couldn't help sending a happy new year's greeting to him up there.

My free hand reached behind me, touching my back, just below my ribcage, caressing the region of the surgery scar.

I went back in a few minutes before midnight.

I looked across the room, through the throng of elegantly dressed people laughing, some dancing, some already making a terrible racket with their noisemakers. My eyes sought a familiar face.

I spotted Minerva again, dancing with a tall young man with dark blond hair, pallid gray eyes and a narrow, rough chiseled face, the kind women call "ruggedly handsome". She was clearly doing her best to enjoy his company, but once or twice our eyes met even at that distance.

The band broke off in the middle of "Moonlight Serenade". A drum roll rattled and the bandleader led the crowd in a countdown.

10…9…8…7…6…5…4…3…2…1…

HAPPY NEW YEAR 2082!

I glanced toward Minerva and her companion. He was kissing her, his mouth on hers; open. But I noted that the back of her neck was bent stiffly, as if she couldn't relax under his touch.

I turned and spotted a slightly tired-looking waitress. I took her hand, wished her a happy new year and kissed her. I took advantage of her slightly startled reaction and made myself scarce: let her wonder who was that Englishman with the piercing green eyes.

I went straight home, but as I reached the door of my apartment, I heard someone drunkenly chanting something in the shadows:

"I went to see Jerome, but I found he was not home…somethingsomethingsomething, last line of this poem." There was the unmistakable gurgle of someone drinking from a liquor bottle.

Eckart, his hat over one ear and his clothes in disarray, waltzed out of the shadows. He focused on me and grinned. "Or is it, 'I went to see Jer-o-um and I found he was not ho-um…somethingsomethingsomething, last line of this po-um'?"

"Good night, Eckart," I said, fumbling with the lock on the door.

He staggered over and clapped his hand on my shoulder. Thank heavens I hadn't had anything myself, and my legs were continuing to grow stronger, or his blow might have knocked me down.

"Hey, iss a new year an' the nightsss young," he slurred. "How 'bout you an' me find usss sssome compumy."

"Thank you, but no," I said,

"Wha'? You gotta resso—hic—lution not t' do nuffin wif ennywun?"

"Not exactly," I said, unlocking the door and opening it.

"Aaaawww, I bet I know," he said. I pushed the door open and ducked through it, but before I could close it, Eckart suddenly righted himself and stuck his knee in so I couldn't close it.

"Who is it?" he asked, sober-voiced.

"What?" I demanded.

"You got it bad for someone, or else you wouldn't be abstaining. Who is it?"

"Nobody," I said. I pulled the door back, blocking the entrance with my body so he couldn't get in, threatening to slam the door on his leg, and with my strength, I could snap it like a celery stalk.

"I bet I know, it's that InValid head-shrinker of yours."

"You couldn't be further from the truth: I just saw her with someone else. Now get out before I call security," I said. "Or better still, I might call the cops and tell them to get this InValid racketeer off my doorstep."

Eckart let out a low chuckle. The sound slowly escalated to a husky laugh, then to a coarse, cackling guffaw, mouth open so wide I could see the white polymer fillings in his molars: they didn't blend well with the yellowing of his actual teeth.

I could have slapped him across the face, but I was tired and I'm not a violent man (despite having attempted violence against myself twice). He tottered away, still cackling, still drunk.

I closed the door slowly. Banging it would only have satisfied him.

The winter rains kept me largely inside, but I managed to venture out as often as I could, walking, building up my legs. My thighs were finally thicker than my knees and I was actually starting to see muscle shadows on them again.

Around the end of February, the beginning of March, Olson said I could probably set aside my stick, unless I felt shaky.

About the same time, Minerva—Dr. Koestelbaum—asked if I felt like I still needed to come in twice a week.

"No, but what if my father should know that I've cut back?"

"He doesn't have to know exactly how often you're coming here."

"I suppose not," I said.

"So…what are you doing to keep moving on these days?"

"Right now I'm walking every day, trying to build my legs up."

"Good for you! I noticed you didn't have your stick today. How much are you walking?"

"As far as I can: about four to five miles a day, sometimes five to six."

"The journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step, but you've come along further than anyone could ever have expected."

"Especially me."

The news came back that the Titan exploration team, docked at _Discovery_ , the space station just off Saturn, had sent a manned craft to Titan to scout the surface. The news carried some of the photographs they sent back. I couldn't help wondering if Vincent/Jerome was among the lucky ones walking that alien surface blanketed with some kind of strange chemical snow (I'm no expert on astronomy, but a rock that far out probably doesn't have an earth-like atmosphere.). Maybe he'd taken the picture.

Minerva had me writing all this down in a journal: my recovery, my thoughts, my observations, my thoughts; I've considered editing parts of it for Vincent, if he ever gets back, if he ever survives the backlash liable to hit him in the face as soon as he shows his face on earth—if they haven't found it out already.

I bought myself a treadmill, but that only made me restless: I felt like a lab rat on a wire wheel.

Instead, I started running laps around the ground floor of the apartment and up the stairs. I soon got so that I could run upstairs without hanging onto the banister. Running down caused a few problems since I still didn't have the coordination to manage it, but it gave me something to work at.

At my next session, I told Minerva I was running now.

"That's great," she said, beaming. "How far are you going?"

"About six miles a day," I said. I described my route in the apartment. I hesitated. "I trip once in a while."

"But you keep getting up and running again."

"That's the only way I can get back to where I was."

As the spring progressed, I started venturing out in the early mornings, with the first full light, to run past the silent, sleeping houses, when no one would see me.

I tripped less often than before. I found a park with a cinder track I'd seen and ran my laps there.

"I saw you running the other day in Greenleaf Park," Minerva said at the next session. "Or at least it looked like you."

"If it was early in the morning, it was me," I said, smiling a little proudly.

"Would you mind if I joined you?" she asked. "It's something I should keep up. I used to run in high school, just for the heck of it."

"Did you go to any meets?"

"No."

"Why not?"

She shrugged. "I just liked running. Competition meant nothing to me. Winning against myself and my own weakness meant more to me than vying for a medal."

There was a lesson to be learned hear, but the old Jerome didn't want to hear it. I changed the subject.

"Back to the bit about your running with me. I think I could tolerate your presence. But I get up early in the morning."

"How early?"

"About 6 a.m. Could you handle that?"

"Sure. I'm an early bird."

"Then let's do that."

We met at Greenleaf Park the very next morning. She wore a sleeveless black jersey over a khaki riding skirt. She was waiting for me over by an oak tree near the cinder track. She smiled and fell in step beside me as I headed for the track.

I quickened my pace. She matched my strides. I walked even faster, on the brink of a run; she still kept up.

I ran flat out, feeling the air rush past my legs, under the soles of my feet, hearing her breathing beside me.

After a couple of laps like this, we both slowed to a standstill.

"You're holding back," I said.

"I don't want to embarrass you," she said.

"Show me."

"Okay." She started walking fast; I watched her gaining momentum around the track. She hit a cruising speed, then she broke into a wild sprint, like a gazelle.

She slowed to a stop as she came up to me, nearly colliding with me, but I sidestepped her.

"My goodness!" I said. I glanced up the track. "Care to race?"

"Nah, I'd beat you."

"Challenge me: I need it."

"Okay, your call," she said.

We got into place, side by side.

"On your mark…get set…GO!"

We took off at the exact same moment, like shots from the same gun. She gained on me, got ahead, but I pushed myself, every muscle and nerve fiber in my legs firing, knees working like pistons. I glanced at her face; her eyes were open, unblinking, completely in the moment, the early morning light flashing off her glasses.

As we reached the home stretch, my left leg buckled under me and I fell, sprawling. She stopped, spun on a dime and knelt beside me to help me up.

"Are you all right?" she asked.

"Yes, yes, my hip joint gave out."

She stood up, lifting me with her. I discovered my hands had clasped her forearms. She looked up into my eyes.

"You steady?" she asked.

I let her go. "I am now."

Each day during the week, after that, we ran together, she and I. Once in a while, in the weeks that followed, she got us breakfast at a local Starbuck's.

Later that season, I went to the Y to see if the job for a swimming instructor was still open. Sure enough, it was. I went home and started preparing my resume, which I submitted to Gerd Koestelbaum. A day or two later, I got a call from him.

Next day, I went in for the interview.

A few kids passed me in the front entryway and the corridor that led from it. They eyed me a little suspiciously and started whispering and grinning among themselves.

I found the directors' offices. I introduced myself to the secretary, who passed my message on to Koestelbaum. A moment later, she came back.

"Gerd will see you now," she said. I got up and went into the office she had emerged from.

Behind the desk, mending a tennis racquet, sat the same angular man I had spotted Minerva with on New Year's Eve.

"Ah, you must be Jerome," he said, standing up. His voice was a bit gruff, but pleasantly so. "Minerva told me a lot about you. I'm Gerhard Koestelbaum, but I'd prefer if you'd call me Gerd."

"She's told me a lot about you. I couldn't help noticing you have the same last name; are you related?"

"I'm her fourth cousin: she's also my fiancée."

My metronome heart skipped a beat, but I didn't let it register in my face. "Well, good luck to you both. She's never mentioned it to me, but I suppose that's for her to decide."

"We're keeping the relationship low-key," he said.

I remember Vincent/Jerome telling me about his one-shot interview at Gattaca: one urine sample, one verification of his identity (mine), and he had the job. This interview wasn't so simple: a lot of questions about my academic and athletic record. I had to sign a release form allowing them to run a full background check, and I'd have to submit to periodic random drug tests.

"Don't think you can get the job just because of your genetic status," Gerd said, an edge of warning to his voice. "The YPCA does not allow genomism in any way, shape, or form, and we expect that of our employees."

"I didn't think my ladder would raise me up any higher," I said, in jest, with a nonchalant shrug.

Gerd caught the joke and his craggy face betrayed a grin.

"So far as I can see, you seem well-qualified for the job," Gerd said. "As soon as the background check goes through, I'll call you back."

After a few final words we shook hands and I went out.

I had never really worked a day in my life before this, not that I had the job yet. Then I caught myself fearing that the ladder-selling incident might have put a blot on my record. But if the YPCA didn't allow genomism, maybe they would actually commend the gesture.

Then I thought perhaps they wouldn't accept the fact that I was still in counseling for my depression, but I realized they probably couldn't do that either, because some emotional disorders are genetically related.

But they turned a blind eye to my flaws. A week later, Gerd called me to say I had the job.

Most of the kids were "anklebiters"—to put it nicely—whose parents had dumped them off to get them out of the way, but I knew how to get them in line. I insisted that they call me either "Mr. Morrow" or "Jerome"; the former if they had yet to earn my respect, the latter if they'd proven themselves. I was strict, I was told, but within reason.

I worked mornings and afternoons, which left my evenings free to start training again. Gerd had swum in college and he'd been filling in as an instructor till he'd hired me, so he spotted me while I swam. I'd never lost my technique, but building myself back up would take some doing. I knew I had months of hard work ahead of me, but it would be just what the doctor ordered.

My days were full now, running with Minerva, therapy sessions on Tuesday with her, coaching the kids, training myself up. Even then, in the summer, it was often sundown by the time I got home. I walked home many nights, gazing up at the stars, watching them come out, wondering which one was Saturn, which one had the moon Vincent/Jerome was walking on now. Had the crew found out his/our little secret?

"You've asked me a millions questions about me and my background," I pointed out to Minerva one morning over breakfast in the Starbucks where we often went after our morning run. "But what about you? I barely know much about you and we've been running together for three months now."

"Oh, don't get me started talking about myself. That's a bad question to ask," she said. "Well be here all morning and we'll both be late for work."

"Why, are you really that self-centered that you'd start blabbing about how great you are?"

"No, it's just people with Asperger's tend to monologue about the things that occupy their attention."

"Maybe by some weird act of God, I've got it: I've monologued to you about myself."

"That's different: that's therapy. Besides, I don't think you'd be here if you had the gene sequence that triggers Asperger's."

"Well, to keep it to one area of curiosity, maybe you could start by telling me about who you are," I said. "Are you and Gerd really engaged?" She still didn't have a ring.

"He's engaged to me, but I'm not engaged to him yet."

"What is that supposed to mean?" I said.

"He wants to marry me, but I'm still not sure I want to marry him."

"Why not?"

"He wants to Validate our children, if we had any. I don't want that: I want my kids to be themselves. I know how to help them the way I was helped." She drew in a long breath. "He's a Valid, third class, but he's talked about wanting our kids to be Valid, first class."

Valid, third class, also known as a "cracked ladder": his genome had been cleared of all health problems, but nothing else had been touched.

"What about you? What would you want for you kids…if you had any?" she asked.

I paused. "Well, that's a little premature for me to say, since I'm not seeing anyone. But I guess I'd leave that up to my wife."

She looked at me odd, almost as if I'd tripped her lie-o-meter yet again. "You don't want that for your children, do you? After what your father put you through?" she asked.

I had to admit, she was right. "No," I said, firmly.

The mornings that followed, she told me more about herself and her family. She was an only child like me, but that was only because of her mother's health. She'd been taught at home, but she hadn't minded it since she was naturally a happy loner. She'd decided to go into psychology when she was sixteen after she'd noticed the depression that haunted most InValids.

"But I see almost as many Valids as I see InValids," she said. "The quest for perfection does that to people, shrivels their hearts so they can't feel good about themselves."

"'There is no gene for the human spirit'," I mused.

"Have you pondered that?" she asked.

"Yes."

"What do you think it means?"

"I think it means…you can't breed people to _not_ follow their dreams. You can manipulate genetics until you've created something better even than me—sorry, than some _one_ like me. But you can't breed them to accept the role of having to be perfect. And also…you can't tell someone to stop dreaming just because their genetics are supposedly bad."

"And how'd you know this?"

"From watching Vincent, from sharing the same living space with him for two years. From my own experience, though I haven't owned up to that till now.

"How did this turn into a psyche session, anyway?" I said.

"I'm sorry," she said, blushing. "I should get out more often."

"That's why you're running with me."

A few days later, she asked me a favor.

"Could you teach me to swim?" she said. "I'll give you a discount on your therapy sessions in exchange."

"Of course," I said. "When do you want to start?"

"When can you fit me in?"

I pulled my palmtop out of my pocket and checked my schedule (Never thought I'd see myself doing that again!). "I have an opening on Fridays at five," I said.

"I can manage that," she said. I jotted her name in.

She looked at me. "You'd do this for me?"

I shrugged. "What are friends for?"

Friday at five she showed up at the poolside, dressed in a modest, violet 1940s style one piece with brief skirts that half-concealed her hips and built in shorts under that, which came down to her mid-thighs, just covering two thin scars that ended just above her knees. It had the odd knack of concealing and revealing her shapely figure at the same time. I have to be honest and admit that I noticed she was a little flat-chested, but I set that aside.

She looked me up and down, grinning somewhat teasingly. "Glad to see I'm not the only modest one," she said.

I consistently wear an old-fashioned suit myself, a tank top built into trunks. "Oh, that's just so I won't have people staring at me," I said.

"You must have a lot of people do that."

"Yes, not just the girls, the guys stare at me, too."

"Gerd doesn't allow that."

"Not that kind of staring, Dr. Masters and Johnson: I meant envious staring."

"I'd think you'd love the attention," she said, twitting.

"To be honest, I don't."

She hid a smile, as if her lie-o-meter had been tripped again.

I spent that first lesson just getting her acclimated to the water. She didn't even know how to hold her breath under water and she was extremely reluctant to put her head under the surface.

"Are you afraid of getting your hair wet or some rot like that?" I teased.

She dropped her gaze to the surface of the water. "You'll laugh."

"I won't."

"It's just…the water hurts my eyes."

I had to bite my tongue hard to keep my word. "You get used to it after awhile: it used to bother me, too."

I didn't push it. She'd respected my comfort level and helped me expand it by challenging me in my sessions with her. That was one thing I'd learned from her, and it helped make me a better instructor.

I was doing so well emotionally that Minerva suggested that I see her every other week instead of every week.

"But of course…that's up to you," she said.

"Well, like you've said, there's only one way to find out," I replied.

It felt strange, coming into her office now that we were on such good terms. She was a very different person there: all business, caring but detached, unlike the young woman who was starting to warm to my charms (Ha. Ha. Ha.).

A year had now passed since my second attempt and what a year it had been.

I took the long way home one night, gazing up at the sky every so often as I walked.

Someone came up alongside me and kicked me in the leg. I staggered, but I righted myself, and turned, ready to defend myself if need be.

Eckart stood before me, grinning up at me and blowing gin-scented breath in my face.

"Long time no see, Jerome, or is it Eugene?" he drawled.

"Never mind that, Eckart, what do you want?"

"I was gonna ask you. I hadn't heard from you in so long, I thought you'd done it again. Y' know, third time's the charm?"

"Far from it."

"You look great. How's it feel to be back on your pins again?"

"I have my shaky moments, but I'm doing better.

He glanced around with just his eyes. "I see you running with that InValid girl-shrink of yours. How's it going with her? She done you any…other favors yet?"

"Not the kind your dirty mind is contemplating."

"You done her any favors?"

"I'm teaching her to swim," I said.

"Ahhh, trying to turn her into a mermaid, eh?" He smacked his lips.

"That isn't the point: I'm helping her get over her fear of the water."

"So you're yer shrink's shrink now. That don't sound good to me."

"We're trading off: she's paying part of her lessons by counseling me."

"Oh, I seeee," he drawled. "Well, have fun with that InValid." He blew one last breath in my face and went away.

A couple days later, I gave Minerva her second lesson getting acquainted with the water.

"I was practicing putting my face under the water all last week," she said hopefully as I led her into the shallow end of the pool.

"Well, let's see it," I said.

She pinched her nostrils shut and squatted. The water came up to her forehead. I was tempted to put my hand on the back of her head and tilt her forward till she was submerged, but I knew better: respect her comfort level till it had expanded.

She popped up again, gasping. Her face had gone white and she trembled a little.

"How was that?" she asked, bright-eyed.

"You're off to a great start," I said.

"It was terrible," she said, incredulous.

"I've seen a lot worse here."

I started her with a simple stroke, the dog paddle, which I figured she could master soon enough. She got the hang of it very easily, with me swimming alongside her, encouraging her. I challenged her, leading her out into deeper water.

She did great for a while, but then suddenly she tensed up. Her spine went straight and she stopped; she sank like a rock. I dove after her, finding she'd settled onto the bottom.

I dragged her out onto the ledge. She wasn't breathing. I turned her on her side, pressing her flesh, just about her pelvis. A runnel of water ran out onto the pavement. I turned her over on her back, pinched her nose shut and gave her mouth-to-mouth.

She twitched and her mouth tightened under mine. I withdrew. She opened her eyes and looked up at me.

"What…happened?" she asked. "Oh…" she blushed, her pallid face gone bright red.

"It's all right," I said.

She propped herself on her elbow weakly. "I hope I didn't…"

"No, you weren't yourself."

"I certainly hope so," Gerd's voice said.

I looked up to find a small crowd had gathered around us, including some of the kids and the other instructors. Gerd elbowed through the crowd and helped Minerva off the floor; he threw a towel around her and hurried her out to the nurse's office. The crowd followed him, me at the back.

I showered while I anticipated the news of Minerva's condition. Because of her allergies, her lungs were a little weak, so there could be trouble.

I was finishing up dressing, tying my shoes in the locker room when Bill, one of the kids who hang around the pool—usually when I'm practicing—came in.

"Hey, Jerry: your girlfriend's okay," he said.

I stood up. "Thank heavens," I said with relief. "But she's not my girlfriend. And it's Jerome."

"Sorry your little act of heroism got overlooked there: Gerd's real protective with her."

I was tempted to say, 'I've noticed', but that would only be grist for the rumor mill. Instead, I said, "It's understood: they're engaged, aren't they?"

"Not to hear her say it," he said. He darted a glance to the end of the locker room. "I think she likes you."

"She won't be the first," I said, getting my rucksack from my locker.

I didn't see Minerva for the rest of the night, but when I came home and switched on the radio, I was just in time to hear the DJ taking a request for a song, "Someone Saved My Life Tonight" by Elton John, an old chestnut that still has flavor.

"I'd like to dedicate this to Jerome," said the female caller's voice.

"And you are…?" the DJ asked.

"He knows who I am and why I picked this song," she said.

I listened, wrapt, to this song, her way of saying thank you. I'd rather that she came forward and thanked me face to face, but if Gerd was as tight with her as Bill had said and as I'd guessed, she couldn't exactly have come up to me and given me the Hollywood thank you with a passionate kiss and all.

The next morning, Minerva met me by the oak tree near the cinder track where we usually met. She still looked a little pale, but it may have been my imagination.

"I'm sorry I didn't get a chance to thank you to your face," she said.

I shrugged one shoulder. "No harm done," I said.

"No. I kissed you. I don't know what came over me, but I came to and found your mouth on mine. I just got all confused and excited."

"You mistook me for Gerd," I suggested.

She shook her head. "I don't kiss him. _He_ kisses me but _I_ don't kiss him."

"I saw you kissing on New Year's Eve." I bit my tongue.

She took no notice of my faux pas. "I wasn't kissing him."

"The why in heck are you—I'm sorry."

"Why am I engaged to him?"

I looked at her hands resting on the tree limb. She still didn't have any rings on her fingers, but she was keeping it low key.

"I really don't know. He's the only man who's cared about me since…since my ex-fiancé genomed me."

"Let's not run today," I said.

We arrived at the Starbucks we had been frequenting just as they opened. Over a chai latte (hers) and a few cups of black Colombian slow roast (mine), she told me the whole story.

They'd met in college. He was in stem-cell transplants and she was in psychology of course. They hit it off well; they shared the same interests, the same faith, they both loved the outdoors and browsing through libraries and antique movies. They got engaged, had they wedding date set, they were even preparing for the wedding when he insisted on a second blood test so they'd know what genetic quirks they had. When he saw she had Asperger's, it was too much for him. He insisted that the only way he could marry her was if they had their children manipulated. "He said he wasn't going to be the father to a 'DeGenerate'," she said. "When I told him there was no such thing as a 'DeGenerate", he accused me of trying to stifle my own offspring."

"He doesn't know how stifling it is to be a Valid."

She smiled thinly. "He was a Valid, second class." Second classes, or "mended ladders" have had the more life-threatening health problems purged and some slight manipulation of appearance, but not much.

"I didn't want to break it off, but he wouldn't accept me any other way." She held her clasped hand to her chin. "He said my adamance was just a symptom of my Asperger's. He couldn't see it for what it was: as my principles. He couldn't accept them." She drew in a long breath. "It left me so depressed, I almost suicided. I had my father's police revolver in my hands. I was going to put a bullet through my temples. But I swear I had a vision of all the people I was going to help someday."

I almost asked, 'Did you see me among them?' but instead I said, "I wish I'd had that kind of vision before I stepped out in front of that car. Then maybe things would have turned out better."

"But you've grown stronger through all this."

I couldn't argue with her when she started talking the psych stuff. Heck, I couldn't argue with the truth, which she was telling me.

"You're right: I wouldn't. I wouldn't have met Vincent, and I wouldn't have met you." I glanced up. "Till he gets back…you're my only real friend."

I didn't look at her the same way again after that: running alongside her, swimming with her, talking with her at my sessions. She'd been where I had been, though she'd learned her lesson quicker.

Once after a lesson, as we were climbing out of the water, she turned to me even before she reached for her towel.

"You know, I've never seen you swim," she said.

"Well, what am I doing beside you in the water?" I sneered, teasingly.

"That's instructing me. I've never seen _you_ swim."

I looked at the pool. "It's not big enough here. Meet me outside after you've showered and changed."

I took her to a spot on the shore Vincent had told me about, a small lagoon with a rocky island about a mile out. While Minerva perched on the rocks overlooking the beach, I stripped down to my shorts and struck out into the water, heading for the island.

I was a little tired after a long day, but it was more the tiredness of bottled-up expectation waiting to be released. The barracuda-speed of my earlier says wasn't back yet, but it would probably be good enough for her.

I reached the shallows near the island and turned, heading back.

She waited for me on the shore, the evening breeze stirring the skirts of her tunic. She'd lit a driftwood fire by the rocks, which had slowly begun to blaze up, warm, inviting. She averted her eyes modestly as I sank down on the rocks beside her.

"You're great. You're the greatest swimmer I've ever seen," she said.

"Better than Gerd?" I asked.

"Much better."

We dug clams from the shallows and roasted them wrapped in seaweed. We sat there on the rocks, watching the sun set and just talking, the fire between us.

The sky overhead turned a deeper shade of blue, then darkened to indigo. The stars slowly came visible. She'd brought along a pair of binoculars, so we took turns looking up at the sky.

"I think I've found Saturn," she said. She pointed out a star on the horizon and handed the binoculars to me. I found it, a white-yellow orb in the heavens. Of course the moons could not be seen, but nevertheless, they were there, and I knew someone who was orbiting one of them, maybe walking on the surface.

I felt the binoculars sink down after a few moments. Saturn stayed visible, a tiny glowing spot in the sky.

"You're wondering about him," she said.

"Yes," I admitted. I found myself adding, "If had a brother, I'd want him to be like Vincent."

"I'd like to meet him someday," she said.

"Please God that you will," I said. I hoped the system could somehow turn a blind eye to him, the way it had to Minerva. Then I had another revelation: I'd invoked God's name with reverence, instead of as an expletive.

But the next morning, when I showed up at our usual spot where we met, Minerva wasn't there. I waited a while. When I almost gave up and turned to start running without her, she showed up, a dejected air to her whole being, her shoulders drooped, her eyes not meeting mine.

"Was it something I said last night?" I asked.

She looked up. "No, last night was wonderful. It isn't you: it's Gerd. He saw us outside your apartment last night. He thinks we're involved."

"Then let him know we aren't."

"I have," she said. "He wouldn't believe me unless we stop seeing each other like this."

"Minerva, what do you want?"

"I'm not sure," she said, with a sad smile.

"Well, maybe…until you decide, we shouldn't see each other so often."

"Maybe just when we have a session, or when you're giving me a lesson," she suggested.

"It's your call," I said.

She paused, head bent. Then she nodded. "I think that's a very wise course of action."

She reached behind me, her hand on the back of my neck, and kissed my cheek, very close to the corner of my mouth. I wanted to pull her to me and kiss her, but I restrained myself.

With that she turned and walked away.

Concluded in the next chapter…

Literary Easter Eggs:

 _Discovery_ —Yes, I swiped the name from "2001: A Space Odyssey".

"genomed"—I don't remember if this is an actual term used in the film, but it paralells with "DNA'ed", a word in _The Dictionary of the Future_ by Faith Popcorn (love that name!), meaning about the same thing "To discriminate against someone by genome or genetic-linked physical flaws."

Afterword:

Okay…I'm going to be crass and hold you all in suspense for a while (i.e. hold off on posting chapter five), since I have a trio of song fics in the works that I may publish as a mini-anthology. A very strange thing has been happening with the Golden Oldies station I listen to while I'm writing this crazy stuff of mine: they keep playing three different songs recently which make me think of this movie: Elton John's "Rocketman", which reminds me a lot of Vincent/Jerome (The line "I'm not the man they think I am at home" kept jumping out at me), "Seasons in the Sun" by I-can't-remember-who, which sounds like it might be Jerome (Eugene's) thoughts before his first suicide attempt, and Simon and Garfunkel's "I am a Rock" sounds like Jerome's whole attitude post-"accident", so I've decided to put the songs STUCK in my head to good use….


	5. Genomed

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> +J.M.J.+

+J.M.J.+

Flesh of My Flesh

By "Matrix Refugee"

Author's Note:

This chapter was a bit challenging to write, for the not so simple reason that I knew it was the last chapter of this story, and also because it was hard to keep the romance from exploding too soon. Jerome (Eugene) and Minerva have been very, very good about it so far, Jerome especially because he pretends to be a non-romantic, which only heightens the tension all the more. (Not being in a relationship, I have to admit, I was a bit envious of them, especially Minerva, heh, heh, heh).

Disclaimer:

See Chapter I

V: Genomed

I should have seen it coming: it was going all too well…

In the months that followed the reining in of my friendship with Minerva, I kept myself busy. I started strength-training my legs, just enough to continue rebuilding the muscles. I'm built slight so my frame can't take a lot of muscle; besides, women don't go for the heavily muscled types.

I wasn't looking for anyone, mind you. I had my work teaching the kids at the Y, and I still had my own training, which kept me busy.

The summer program ended, but Gerd kept me on, teaching adult classes in the evenings, which left me the mornings free to continue my own work. I was almost too busy to notice I wasn't seeing much of Minerva.

Summer passed into fall, which melted into winter's intermittent rain. My thirty-fourth birthday came around with little fanfare, except for a card and a cheque from my parents. Eckart sent an Arab girl dancer up to my apartment that night. I pretended I wasn't at home, but he picked the lock and sent her in. I did the right thing and called security; Eckart disappeared before they arrived, which left me to explain to the guards the presence of the houri who kept trying to drape herself over my shoulder.

I had one perk though: Gerd had gone out of town for a couple of weeks without Minerva. A bit of the mice playing while the cat was away: I rang her the afternoon of New Year's Eve to see if she wanted to go out.

"I was just about to call you," she said. "Are you doing anything tonight?"

"No, I was going to ask you that, otherwise I'd just go out to get out of the flat. Did you have anything planned?"

"Yes, a bunch of my friends and I are going caroling tonight. Would you want to join us?"

"I'm game."

"Good, I'll see around six?"

"Sure, sure."

At six someone leaned on the buzzer at my apartment door. I opened it.

Minerva stood just outside, a small group of young folk behind her. One young wag with tousled dark blond hair stuck the lens of a video camera practically in my face. "Is this him? Is this the English patient?" he asked.

"Yep, this is him," Minerva said, stepping aside.

"Get the bloody camera out of my fayce," I snarled, deliberately exaggerating my accent.

She quickly introduced me to the group: Matt, the wiseacre with the camera; Cheryl, Minerva's college roommate, and her husband Whiteman; Matt's roommate Hamilton, known simply as "Ham" because he was an actor; Ayanna, an African foreign exchange student who had decided to stay on in the States, amongst others.

"Can you sing, Jerome?" Whiteman asked as we set out.

"Of course he can sing! His folks probably ordered opera singer vocal cords for 'um," Ham twitted.

"Can it, Ham," Cheryl retorted.

"I can sing well enough," I said, shrugging. "I was a choir boy when I was younger."

"Then you're perfect for us," Cheryl said.

"Yeah, let him sing, we'll try to keep up," Matt said.

We trouped through the residential sections of town, singing as we went. What our chorusing lacked in accuracy we made up for with gusto, which even I found infectious.

A few people didn't receive us well. One guy came to the door wearing nothing but a towel, while another person requested "The Zither Carol", which only Minerva knew.

"Of course you'd know the odd stuff, seeing you're entranced with arcane things," I said, nudging her.

But most of the reactions were good. One burly older gent came to the door with an accordion and joined in, singing in a lusty bass, while at another house, a grandmotherly-looking woman brought out a tray of fresh gingerbread.

Finally, a little hoarse, but still ready for more fun, we piled into the back of Cheryl and Whiteman's pick-up truck (with a cap on the back). Minerva tried to perch on a toolbox, above where I sat on the floor, but we hit a bump in the road and she pitched off, right into my lap.

"Oof!" I grunted.

"Hey, get yer dirty Valid paws off her!" Matt teased. "And you, Miss InValid, go fish of the InValid pier, especially with your man out of town!"

"Oh, hush!" she retorted, getting out of my lap. "Did I hurt you?"

"No, but it let me know I'm cured," I said.

We ended up in the yard of Cheryl and Whiteman's house for the post-caroling festivities around a bonfire, sitting on upturned pails and tree stumps, roasting weenies and marshmallows. Matt tried roasting a potato skewered on the end of his stick, but he kept dropping it into the fire. The gang spent the time chatting and teasing each other with crazy stories of things they had done and had lived to regret. Someone prevailed on Minerva to sing the "Zither Carol", which she encored with a ridiculous ditty called "Dominic the Donkey".

I could have listened to her voice all night; she had the proverbial voice of an angel. For "the Donkey" she dropped her voice half an octave; and suddenly I recognized that voice, the voice of the unknown female vocalist I'd heard on Drexel's MP3 player the day of my surgery.

They pested me into singing next. I tried to demur, but they wouldn't hear of it. I regaled them with a comic song my aunt used to sing, called "The Drunk Lady's Christmas", which basically consists of a litany of cocktails sung to the tune of "12 Days of Christmas"; I couldn't remember half the words, so I ad-libbed it (It's supposed to be ad-libbed anyway.), which turned it into—according to Ham—"The Drunk Valid's Christmas" (And yes, Matt was getting this all down on tape!).

"You have a good voice, Jerome," Minerva told me.

"Yeah, if you like creaking doors," Matt twitted.

"Creak for yourself," I said.

"No, really, you have a great voice," she said, ignoring Matt. "Kind of like a cross between David Bowie's and Placido Domingo's."

"Is that good or bad?" I ventured.

She held her stick between her knees as she sandwiched her molten marshmallow between two graham crackers. "In my not-so-humble opinion, that's a very good thing."

"At least you admit it," I said.

At five minutes to midnight, Whiteman came out of the house with a battery radio he set on a stump, tuning it to a station that carried a broadcast of the festivities in Times Square. I noticed a few of the group going in and out of the kitchen door, coming out with pots and pans and kitchen things. I expected Minerva to go in with them, but she stayed put, listening with rapt concentration on the last twenty seconds of the year 2082.

As the radio blared "Auld Lang Syne", the gang started yelling and banging on their pots and pans and things. I turned to Minerva as she turned to me, her hand on my coat sleeve.

"Happy New Year, Jerome," she said, with a smile, her face tilted up to mine.

"Happy New Year to you, too, Minerva," I said. I leaned down to her slightly, drawing her closer.

I expected her to turn her head away at the last second, but she didn't. She drew me closer. Our lips met in the middle, lightly.

"Hey, lookit this!" Ham yelled. "Jerome and Minerva, up in a tree; K-I-S-S-I-N-G!"

We broke apart. Minerva blushed bright pink. Matt had trained his wretched camera on us both; I turned and faced it, giving it—and him—the coldest look of disdain I had in me until he took the camera away in search of a less hostile target.

The pots and pans band took their racket to the streets, forming a procession. A few people came out of their houses, joining in with their own noisemakers. Under cover of the racket, Minerva took me aside.

"Does that racket bother your ears?" I asked her.

"Yeah, its just the way my hearing is wired," she admitted.

"I'm a little tired myself," I said. "But thanks for having me along."

"You looked like you were enjoying yourself."

"For the first time in a long time, I was," I said.

She drove me back to my apartment. Before I got out, I asked her what I hoped would only be a quick question:

"Did I really feel what I felt when you kissed me, or was I just imagining that?"

She dropped her gazer. "I can't say…If I answer the way I really felt, it might be misconstrued."

"By whom, me? Gerd?"

"By the both of you."

"You told me one that to follow your dreams involves a choice. I think there's a choice you have to make as well."

She put her hand on mine and looked at me. "I know. And I'd better make it soon."

"In that case, I'd better let you decide it," I said, pushing open the door and getting out. "Good night, Minerva."

"Good night, Jerome."

I closed the door and stepped up onto the kerb. She pulled away into the night.

As I walked to my door, I heard footsteps nearby. I looked around as I keyed the lock. Something moved, dashing across and opening of light between the shadows of the buildings in the complex. I couldn't make out what it could be.

A few days later, Gerd came back to the Y. He seemed a little cooler than usual, but it could have been my imagination.

But then, one evening, as I was heading out after a long day, Bill the gadfly came up behind me and poked me in the back.

"The boss-man wants to see you in his office," he said.

"Regarding?" I asked.

"I dunno, but he seems mad."

I found Gerd in his office, standing by the window looking out at the rain splatting the pane, his back to the door.

"Close the door," he ordered, without turning around.

I reached back and pushed the door shut. He turned to me slowly without looking at me.

"I've heard about how you and Minerva have been carrying on," he said.

"She asked me to join her and a group of her friends for New Year's Eve. We went caroling, then we went to her friend Cheryl's house for a cookout."

"Is that all?"

"I kissed her for luck at midnight, but it was more of a friendship kiss than anything else," I said.

"Anything else?"

"She drove me home. We said good night. And I went into my apartment as she drove away."

He nodded slowly. "That's all I wanted to know. You can go."

I went out. The cold rain falling couldn't have chilled me more than Gerd's words.

Around the fourteenth of February, I sent a single white rose to Minerva, to help aide her decision. I think if I had second sight, I might have done otherwise.

I spent the night of Valentine's Day alone, which was no longer so lonely as it had been. I had my memories to keep me company, but I couldn't help wondering what Minerva was telling Gerd. I pictured them having dinner together in an alcove of a hotel dining room, he presenting her with a ring as he popped the question; her telling him no, she couldn't, admitting she loved another man.

Who? he'd ask.

A very good friend of mine, man who's life I saved and who saved my life.

No, no, not Morrow, he'd say, desperate. Not that smug first-class.

Yes, he.

But I also saw her smiling, saying yes, letting him slip the ring onto her finger.

It didn't surprise me that Gerd didn't show up next morning. The kids all had their theories, the most common being, "Wow, Minerva must REEEALLY have a hold on the man!", but quite a few others were contending, "Man, she must've dumped him hard."

"Whaddya think, Jerry: she took him or she dumped him?" Bill the gadfly asked me in the locker room.

"I think that's between Gerd and Minerva," I said, buttoning up my shirt.

"Ohhh, so y' DO like her! Idn't she yer shrink?"

"That's privileged information," I said.

"Guess that's the Brit way of takin' the Fifth."

"It's not for you to know."

"Yeah, riiiiggghhht," Bill grinned, darting away before I could poke him.

When Gerd didn't show up for work the next day, we all started to wonder what was going on. I had an appointment with Minerva that morning, which let us all know where Gerd _wasn't_.

But then late in the afternoon, Gerd showed up. He avoided me in the hallway and he didn't spot me during one of my training sessions.

However, as I headed out that evening, he suddenly stepped out of his office, his face grim.

"Morrow: in my office. Now," he ordered, jerking his thumb over his shoulder.

I followed him into the office. He turned, reached over my shoulder and slammed the door shut. He faced me, looking me in the eye.

"What are you doing?" he demanded.

"What am I doing about what?" I asked.

"You know what I mean: what are you doing to Minerva?"

"I've done nothing to her except teach her to swim."

"You're getting around her, aren't you? You're screwing with her head, trying to take her away from me. Aren't there enough Valid women out there for you?"

"Minerva once told me she wasn't sure about marrying you because you wanted to have her kids Validated."

"I told her that I'd changed my mind about that, that I'd let our kids be conceived the old-fashioned way. But she still said no. What did you do to her?"

"I've done nothing to her."

He was deadly silent for a second, his eyes blazing. "I can't fire you. But I suggest that you find yourself another trainer."

He opened the door with a cold look that clearly said 'Get out.' I went.

One cloud gets lonely in the sky…

As I walked to my door later that evening, I heard a car approach behind me, tires screaming. I dove into the shadows.

A small man in black leaned out of the car window, armed with a small rifle. He aimed in my direction and fired three shots.

I hit the ground and rolled out of the way. I expected to hear bullets hit the wall. Instead, small white darts dropped around me. I lay still, pretending I'd been hit, as the car sped away.

I sat up and took my handkerchief from my pocket. I picked up one of the darts and examined it. It looked like the kind of darts used in tranquilizer guns.

I laid it down carefully and went in to call the police.

"So did you catch the license plate of the car?" the detective asked me, as the other officers and investigators combed the area for anything else.

"No, it was too dark and I was trying to dodge the shots," I said. "I think it was a late model Saturn, dark blue maybe black. There were two men in it, as far as I could tell, one smaller than the driver.

"We'll canvas the area, see if anyone got a better look at it," he said.

"But can you tell me what was in those darts?"

"It's too soon to tell; we'll have to have a lab analyze them. Right now, they look like standard tranquilizer darts, the kind veterinarians and forest rangers use. Do you know of anyone who might want to injure you?"

I meant to say no, but I replied, "There is one man, Gerhard Koestelbaum over at the YPCA."

"We'll be in touch in case we get any other leads. For now, if you have a regular routine, you might want to vary it a little, just so it won't be easy for the suspects to track you."

"And make it harder for them to try and plug me again."

"You got it."

I ran my laps inside the apartment the next morning. I walked a more circuitous route to work and went home by yet another route entirely.

A few days later, the detective on the case called me back.

"We just got the results on those darts: you should consider yourself very lucky, Mr. Morrow."

"Why, what was in them? Poison?"

"It may as well have been: they're what are known as ladder-smashers. They're full of reprogrammed viruses loaded with faulty gene sequences."

My blood ran cold at the sound of that. "Why kind of genetics?"

"One line would case premature balding, another would cause glaucoma, the third contained the obesity gene."

My stomach tightened at that. "What sick son of a b-h would do this?"

"Someone who obviously hates Valids. Of course the symptoms wouldn't show up immediately. But genetic contamination is irreversible."

"So I really lucked out."

"Don't think this means you can let down your guard. We haven't made any arrests yet."

"I heard the news," Minerva said, a day later after her swimming lesson. "Have they found out who did it?"

"No, they've questioned a couple labs that have been known to produce reprogrammed viruses for research purposes, but no one's talking yet. So the FBI is supposed to step in to put a little pressure on them," I said.

"I know your next appointment isn't for another week, but I think I have an opening on Tuesday afternoon, at three, in case you think you need it."

"I certainly could use it," I said. "Might I ask you a question?"

"Sure."

"Do you know anything about Gerd, why he's acting so strangely of late? He's been extremely cold toward me."

She dropped her gaze to the surface of the water. "The night of St. Valentine's Day, he asked me to marry him…I told him it wouldn't work, that it wasn't him. He needs someone else."

"Is that your only reason?" I asked.

She gave me that mysterious smile of hers that meant there was more going on in her head than she cared to say at that moment. "No. But I can't tell you here."

I knew better than to press her for more information

I found another trainer, a man named Malloran Whittaker, better known as "Wit", who turned out to be no one less than the gent with the accordion who'd sung with Minerva and her gang on New Year's Eve. He was a slave driver as a trainer, but he was just what I needed.

Gerd avoided me for the most part, or if he had to speak to me, he discharged it in the most perfunctory manner. Maybe I'd gone paranoid since the shooting, but I wondered if there was more to his iciness than mere coldness.

I hadn't seen Eckart in months. I'd wondered if someone's husband had shot him, since I hadn't heard anything from him, and I doubt he'd given up the racket. Or maybe he'd been picked up selling ladders, like German, his mentor, who'd hooked me up with Vincent.

I spent the first half of my next session with Minerva talking about the shooting and the subsequent investigation, telling her about the close shave with contamination I'd had. I could tell she listened partly as a friend, but mostly as a therapist.

"You're really lucky that you weren't harmed. Have you heard anything more from the detectives?" she asked.

"No, they're supposed to contact me as soon as they make an arrest.

"But this isn't the only problem I've had lately," I said, tentatively. I paused, searching for the right words. "I'm in love."

"Well, good for you! Tell me about her."

"She's a very smart young woman, she's beautiful, gifted…and she's an InValid."

"And that bothers you?"

"No, not at all," I said. "I'm just afraid she won't be interested in me…because I'm a Valid."

"If she really seems like the right woman to pursue a relationship with, there's only one way to find that out. I think you know what that is."

"Test the waters."

"Yes."

"But that's just it: she's that kind of girl who doesn't show her emotions on the surface."

She licked her lips. "I think you'll know how she feels about you and when she shows it. she just might need the right man to bring her out."

"I just hope that I'm that right man for her."

"You're afraid of making a mistake."

I nodded, too chastened to speak.

"You have nothing to lose by asking her. If you don't ask, you won't know."

"I'll ask her."

I wanted to call Minerva that very night. I kept reaching for the phone, but my hand stopped just before it touched the receiver. I tried to avoid the phone by going on the Internet, but that didn't keep my eye form roving back to the phone.

It got late. I cursed my nerves and went to bed. Maybe things would have gone differently…but maybe not…

In the middle of the night, something crashed through a window somewhere nearby, awakening me from a sound sleep. I figured it was next door and started to go back to sleep. But then I smelled something burning. The smoke alarm in the hallway wailed like a banshee.

I threw back the covers and bolted for the back entrance. I kicked the door open and bolted out into the cold.

The other inhabitants of the unit had already evacuated, just as the fire brigade arrived. My weak leg gave out and I fell to the ground. Two medics ran up to examine me.

"Are you all right? Do you feel pain anywhere?" one of them asked.

"I'm al right, my leg just gave out," I said, rising. They examined me to be in the safe side. Another crewmember brought a blanket—I was wearing only my shorts. I insisted on walking to the shelter of one of the emergency vehicles.

A crowd of people from the rest of the complex had gathered at the edge of the scene, watching, their faces eerily lit by the flickering light from the windows, their cries of consternation rising over the roar of the flames.

The crowd parted. Minerva ran up, a coat thrown on over her bathrobe, and her feet stuffed into her shoes.

"Let me through! I'm a psychologist: one of my patients is there!" she cried. The police who tried to bar her way let her through.

She came to the van where I sat, huddled inside the blanket. I pulled it closer around myself as she came near.

"Jerome, are you all right?" she asked.

"I'm alive, I'm unharmed," I said.

She put her arms around me; I couldn't quite tell, but there was more than just a motherly or a friendly concern there.

The Red Cross put the survivors up in a motel for the night and gave each of us a change of clothes in case we'd lost everything to the flames.

Next day, Minerva cane around to take me back to what had been my apartment to see what we could salvage. There'd been no serious structural damage to the building, so the fire marshal was allowing the former inhabitants to salvage whatever belongings they could. They suspected foul play: they'd found a broken glass bottle that might have been a Molotov cocktail.

The furniture had been badly scorched and charred. Most of my first editions were unsalvageable. I found the case that contained my silver medal: the leather on the case was blackened from the heat, but unscathed.

But when I opened the case itself, I found the medal itself had melted.

I sank down on the cinders that littered the floor, feeling tears at the corners of my eyes. Minerva came up behind me, looking over my shoulder. "What's that?" she asked.

"It…was my silver medal," I said.

"Oh, Jerome…I'm so sorry."

"The old Jerome would be glad to see this," I said. "But he's long gone."

"Let it out…let that pain out."

I think I cried for a few moments, but I pulled myself together to finish the work.

"So where are you going to go?" Minerva asked, as we sat on the kerb beside the few boxes containing my things later that afternoon.

"I'm trying to find another apartment within walking distance from the Y, but there isn't anything available," I said.

"Well…I've got a couple rooms in my house that I was going to put up for rent," she offered.

"How much did you want for renting them?"

"100 a week."

"I can afford that," I said.

I moved in that day. She drove my few surviving belongings to her house, an antique wood frame house built somewhat like a New England saltbox. She told me that an eccentric millionaire from Massachusetts had had the house moved cross-country back in the 1970s so his wife wouldn't feel too displaced when they left Boston to live here.

"Someone like me couldn't possibly live in a normal house, could she?" she said, twitting herself.

Inside was as comfortably lived in as her office, lightly cluttered with books and magazines. She led me upstairs to the two empty rooms she had set aside.

"The only trouble is there's only one bathroom and it's on the ground floor," she said.

"I can handle the stairs," I said.

"But we'll be colliding," I said. "Unless we assign hours."

"Good idea: I'm usually up at seven."

"I'll take the six o'clock slot then," I said. "You'll never know I was here."

"I imagine I won't," she said. "But I'd better warn you about that bathroom: The latch on the door doesn't work sometimes. And you'd better be careful when you take a bath; if someone is running hot water in the kitchen, the hot water cuts out in the bathroom."

"In that case I'll just take care not to take a bath when you're doing dishes.

"But there's just one other thing," I added.

"What?"

"What is Gerd going to think of this?"

"I don't think he cares."

Despite Minerva's warning, I went to take a bath after supper, to get the smoke and cinders out of my hair and my pores. I let the water run while I went for my robe upstairs. When I came back, I shut the bathroom door before I peeled, but I neglected to check to see if the latch had engaged. When I stuck my foot into the three or four inches of water in the bath, I let out a roar of shock: it was ice-cold (And mind you, this was my left foot, the one that's not always awake.).

I jumped back and since the latch wasn't engaged, the door popped open from my exertions. Naturally Minerva was right there, passing by with some of her laundry. And there I was, as genetic engineering had made me.

She looked away, blushing absolutely bright pink as she pulled and I pushed the door shut.

"And like the arrogant Valid that I am, I ignored your warning about the bathroom," I said, coming out later, my robe wrapped close about me.

"It's all right," she said. "Everyone has trouble with it, even I do sometimes and I've lived here since I was qualified." Somehow, I could tell from the look in her eye that she wasn't disappointed with what she'd seen of me, but she was too modest to let on.

Next day, I called my parents to tell them what had happened.

"So where are you staying now?" Mum asked.

"I'm renting a couple of rooms from a friend of mine."

"Do you have anything left?"

"I've got a few sticks of furniture, and the Red Cross provided a few odds and ends

"We'll be over as soon as we can. I'll make the flight arrangements as soon as I get off."

"Mum, no, don't go to that trouble. I just called to tell you I'm all right."

"You've had a terrible experience. We'll have to help you replace what you lost."

"All things considered, I'm doing well."

We went back and forth like this for several minutes. In the end, my mother won out.

I hung up the phone and leaned back in the chair of Minerva's telephone table, kneading my forehead with my knuckles.

"Trouble with your mother?" Minerva asked.

"Yes," I admitted. "They're coming over as soon as they can."

She patted my shoulder. "We'll manage."

Next morning, my parents arrived at Minerva's door after she'd left for work. They insisted on taking me out shopping right away. I had to divulge what I'd lost in the fire; my father insisted on helping me buy a complete new wardrobe, while my mother grilled me for the titles of the books I'd lost.

My father pelted me with questions: why hadn't I finished my education? Was I ever going to find a wife? Was I working? I answered him as best as I could: I was training again for the next Olympics; I was just starting a relationship with a doctor; and I was working as a swimming instructor at the local Y.

They took me out to lunch. Afterward, we went home, just as Minerva had come back from her office.

She met us at the door and let us in. My father took one look at her and his face went as cold as a stone in winter. He turned to me.

"So you fell in love with your therapist," he said, icy-toned.

"She offered me the rooms," I said. "I didn't have much to choose from."

"Mr. Morrow, you're gravely mistaken," she said.

"And now you're cohabiting with this…this DeGenerate?" my father spluttered.

"I'm only sharing the house," I said.

"But why this female? Why not come home to live with us?" Mum wheedled. "We've kept your rooms free."

"I'm going to marry this highly intelligent young woman," I said before I knew the words were out of my mouth.

My father's face went purple. "Very well, have your InValid. But don't expect to see a penny of your inheritance," he snapped. "Estelle, come along."

With that, they went out. I let out a sigh of relief, but I turned to Minerva.

She'd sunk down on the couch, her head down and her shoulders trembling. I sat down next to her, slipping my hand behind her back.

"Here, it's all right now: they're gone," I said.

"I know, but the things they said about me…I should be used to it by now."

I stroked her face. "No, nobody could get used to that. Don't listen to them: listen to me."

She slowly lifted her face to mine. "I heard what you said to them…is it true?"

"I said it to drive them off…but I mean it. You mean as much to me as life itself."

She smiled at me through her tears. "You mean as much to me as life itself and the world we live in."

"All the way to Saturn and back," I countered.

"All the way to the event horizon of the universe and back."

I had to have the final word. "All the way to the mind of God…and back down to the DNA in our cells."

"Do you love me?" she asked.

"Yes…you knew already."

She smiled and nodded, "That InValid girl you told me about."

"I don't have to tell you, but you'll want to hear it…that was you."

I had two bracelets made up from the silver of my medal: one for her, one for me, both engraved with her motto: "There is no gene for the human spirit," my first present for my future wife.

I quickly settled into being the man of the house, checking the locks before we retired for the night—in separate rooms, Minerva wanted to wait for the ring. The idea irked me at first, but I quickly adjusted to it.

It was good that I rook up this duty, as I later found out.

One night, as I was securing the front door, I heard something fumbling with the back door. I ran to the kitchen and found the back door opening, a small dark shadow slipping in.

I threw on the light and grabbed the intruder by the throat, shoving him up against a wall.

"You little sneak, what are you doing?" I snarled, looking down into Eckart's skull-face, already grinning nervously as the sweat broke out in beads on his forehead.

"It was you, wasn't it?" I demanded.

"What was me?" he asked, his voice gone smooth with innocence.

"You were the one spying on me." I stomped on his foot, which stopped him from worming out of my grasp. "And you fired that ladder buster at me."

At this moment, Minerva came into the room. She walked out just as quickly. I heard her dialing the phone.

"That her?" he asked.

"Who?"

"Your shrink. God, she's a looker! She must feel good under you…for an InValid."

"None of your damned business," I said, icy-voiced.

"I take that as a yes," he purred, licking his chops. "Never had InValid before—"

I squeezed the back of his neck as he tried to break away again. "I just live here. And I might not be living here if you hadn't set my flat on fire."

"So I helped you get the girl," he said with a grin. "Isn't that what you wanted, or do you really have something for that _other_ InValid?"

"If you mean Vincent, I only have respect and admiration for him."

Sirens wailed in the near distance, coming closer. Eckart tensed in my grasp and tried to fight me again. In theory, I probably could have crushed him to death, but I did not want to do that.

"You sadist!" Eckart snarled. "You destroy everything you love. Even me. You loved what I did for you, didn't you? But you never thanked anyone for anything. German, my boss, got you a way to give your dreary little life a purpose, and you never gave him a word of thanks. I helped you find the love of your life and you insult me. You did it, you coward! You used me… the way you use every InValid you meet."

"No, Eckart," I said, calmly, though to be honest the old Jerome wanted to bash his head in. "You used me. You played on my imperfections and you used them to your advantage.

"Who had you watching me?"

"A guy named Gerd."

I was afraid of that. "And shooting those darts at me, whose idea was that?"

"Not mine."

"Then whose?"

A long pause. "His…Gerd's."

Now that was a twist on the jealous rival shooting at the man courting his girl. "And the Molotov cocktail through the window?"

He said nothing, just gave me an odd smile, and I knew then he'd done that out of pure malice, to finish off the job even though Gerd had relinquished it.

I released my grip on him. He moved tentatively. I let him go and stepped back. He looked up at me warily.

"What are you doing?" he asked.

"Letting you go."

"Why?"

"Because it's the right thing to do."

"So at the last minute, we turn into a saint. The cops 'll drag me off and you'll go back to slam-banging that InValid girl. You love screwing with us, don't you?"

He lunged at me, screeching an expletive and reached for my throat. I could have roundhouse punched the little broken ladder. But I fended him off with a glancing blow on his cheekbone, pulling the punch.

He fell over backwards, sprawling at my feet. He looked up at me, clutching his face.

"You enjoyed that, you smug Valid prick," he snarled.

"Not as much as you enjoyed trying to kill me," I said. I stepped across his prone form just as the police appeared on the back steps, two officers, one older than the other. "He's right here, officers." I jerked my thumb over my shoulder. "I had to subdue him."

"Well, hello, Phil," the senior officer said with mock joviality as Eckart scrambled to his feet. "Don't tell me: break in and entry."

"I was only dropping in to see a friend," Eckart said.

"You have an interesting MO for dropping in," the officer said, as his partner slapped the cuffs on Eckart. "Oh, and this isn't the only reason we're taking you downtown: we've found a link between you and some other 'favors' you've done for this gentleman."

They dragged Eckart out into the night. I pushed the door shut. My gimpy leg started wobbling, and I had to sit down on one of the kitchen chairs.

Minerva came in, clad in her bathrobe. "Are you all right?" she asked.

"Yes," I said. "I just purged myself of my worst demon…after the old Jerome, of course."

"Eckart?"

"He picked the lock. He can't bother us any more."

"Now you can start a new life," she said, putting her arms about me, consolingly. I drew her to me.

And start a new life I have…

Now she lies asleep next to me while I finish jotting this, her slender form curled contentedly against me. She sighs softly in her sleep and I wonder if she dreams.

To give it the nineteenth century explanation: Dear reader, I married her.

The critics said it wouldn't last. They said I'd go looking for a woman of my own class within six months. Well, six months have passed, and we are still very much together. We had to find a priest who would marry us without a license, but we're married in the eyes of God even if society frowns upon our marriage. Damn mankind's stupid laws! Damn his quest for the wrong kinds of perfection. Look at what it did to me!

She was flesh of my flesh, nerve of my nerves for two years. Now where there were two of us of very different classes, we are one in heart, one in soul, one in spirit. I'd even say one in mind, I swear she knows what I'm thinking. She was perfect where I was imperfect, and this has perfected me.

We had a simple wedding on the beach where Minerva and I had had our first unofficial date. Cheryl prepared a clambake for Minerva's gang of friends, who'd quickly become mine as well. We told everyone we'd be spending the wedding night at the Ritz-Carlton in town. But after dark, Minerva and I snuck back to the beach. By the light of the full moon, and with Saturn rising in the east, we swam together in the calm waters of the lagoon. Later, we made love for the very first time, at the water line, the soft waves washing over and around us. I wonder if Adam and Eve had it so well on the first honeymoon the world ever saw. I'd been a little concerned that I might not be able to do my best for Minerva, but I surprised us both. We slept on the sand dune on a bed of sweet-salt smelling grasses, Minerva nestled against my heart; but I woke to find I'd let her go in the night. This bothered me at first, especially because I had turned over on my stomach, away from her. But I found she'd pillowed her head on the middle of my back, her hand under her cheek, covering my surgical scar…

She turns to me and opens her eyes, then looks at the notebook I'm jotting in. "Whatcha got there?" she asks.

"Just my journal," I say. "Jotting down a few things for Vincent."

"When's he coming back?" she asks.

"Seven more months from now."

She takes my hand in hers. "Right about the same time our son will arrive."

The notebook drops from my hand. I turn to her. "Our…son? Are you sure?"

She nods. "There's a way to find out even this early. I'd like to name him Vincent."

"Eugene Vincent," I correct her. I reach out and cover her belly with my free hand.

Perfection, imperfection; male, female…I refuse to put my children through the living hell their grandfather put me through. We may have to hide our offspring under the bed or in the closet…but maybe, like Moses, our son will bring freedom to his kind.

The End…

Afterword:

A sequel to this is in the works, which looks like it's going to be from Vincent/Jerome's POV, so keep an eye on this category!

Literary Easter Eggs:

Christmas songs—with the exception of "The Zither Carol", I heard all these songs on the local "Golden Oldies" station at Christmas.

Jerome's trouble with the bathtub and door—Art imitates life: I had the cold water craziness happen to me as I was drafting this chapter, but I had no trouble with indecent latches.


End file.
